The 2018 Vienna Philharmonic New Year's Concert

One of the most anticipated events of the classical calendar, the Vienna Philharmonic’s exquisite New Year’s Concert brings the musicians of the prestigious orchestra together under the baton of a different influential conductor each year. Centered around a wide variety of dances in the Viennese style—especially the world-famous waltzes of the Strauss family—every edition brims with stately serenity and a hint of mischief, the perfect way to begin your New Year in music.

In 2018, the excellent Riccardo Muti was invited to lead the New Year's Concert for the fifth time (to be followed by a sixth in 2021). The ensemble gets the festivities underway with the grandiose Entrance March from Johann Strauss, Jr.'s The Gypsy Baron, before continuing with a superb selection of waltzes and polkas, as well as the Overture from Franz von Suppé's Boccaccio and a gavotte by Hungarian composer Alphons Czibulka. The orchestra brings the concert to a spectacular close with their time-tested encores, the "Blue Danube" Waltz by Johann Strauss, Jr., and his father's Radetzsky March.

Photo © Filip Waldmann