Growing up in the Spira household, there was never any doubt about the family activity on New Year’s Day each year. While circumstances (along with a mad Austrian with a funny mustache) had dictated that our Famliensitz, or Hauptwohnsitz, be in New York, our hearts were always in Vienna that day, the day of the Neujahrskonzert, or New Year’s Concert, of the Wiener Philharmoniker.
The concert in Vienna is steeped in tradition, and so was the way we would watch it in exile. Vater, or Father, had several Mozartkugel ready and waiting. At specified times (that he of course specified), he would place one onto a beautifully decorated Rosenthal plate, cut it evenly into fourths, and offer first my mother, Mutti, then me, and then mein Brüderchen, my brother, Greg, a piece. Only after we each had our piece in hand, as it were, did we all say in unison, „Prosit Neujahr!“ and consume the piece in two, maybe three bites. Indeed, it was not until 2009 that I would become the second in my family (the first was Gama Paula, my Großmutter, in 1958) to attend the Neujahrskonzert in person, this after winning the drawing by lot for the first time, and I got to see Daniel Barenboim on the podium in the Musikverein’s Goldener Saal in person.
But I digress.
The Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s concert is the most widely viewed event in classical music. Although it dates back to the dark days immediately after the Anschluß, it was first broadcast on television in 1959. For many years, it was hosted in the United States by television anchorman Walter Cronkite, who never quite learnt how to pronounce the word “Musikverein,” as my father would always note, and later by Julie Andrews, who did pronounce the name of the hall correctly. In recent years, Hugh Bonneville has served as host.
The author after attending the 2009 New Year’s Day Concert, conducted by Daniel Barenboim, with flowers taken as a souvenir
The year 2025 marks the 200th anniversary of the birthday of Johann Strauß and was the seventh time that Maestro Riccardo Muti conducted the ensemble for the Neujahrskonzert. Muti, one of the world’s great Verdi interpreters, is equally in his element with the bonbons of the Strauß family and the thought-provoking works of the classical composers who tower over Vienna, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Brúckner, von Webern, and Schónberg, among others.
It’s one of the music world’s biggest days in the calendar. At the same time, the format of the New Year’s Day concert is nothing if not predictable as it broadcasts waltzes by the Strauß family to over one billion viewers worldwide.
When Muti took the podium to perform the “Freiheits-Marsch,” he was the longest-serving conductor in the event’s history after having conducted the New Year’s Day event in 1993, 1997, 2000, 2004, 2018, and 2021.. Muti, who is now 83, has worked with the orchestra continually for over 50 years and has an intimate relatiopnship with both the ensemble and the music – a list selected almost exclusively from the works of the Strauß family. Indeed, the music of the Strauß family immediately sent a message of harmony, lightness, beauty, and pace to the audience in the Goldener Saal of the Musikverein as well as to viewers like you in their homes spread across 90 countries.
One piece was written not by a Strauß but by the first female composer to have a piece included in the New Year’s Concert, Constanze Geiger, who was alive in the time of Johann Strauß. The proceedings, however, began with a rousing rendition of the “Freiheits-Marsch” by Johann Strauß I and continued with a wonderfully sweet “Dorfschwalben aus Österreich” by Josef Strauß, followed by a Demolirer-Polka that adopted just the right tone for a piece of music that celebrates a decree by Kaiser Franz Joseph that the city limits of the capital be expanded to cater to the further needs of a blooming and prosperous city.
Geiger’s piece, the “Ferdinandus Waltz,” is interesting not only because a woman of the mid-nineteenth century and Vormärz period was composing waltzes but also because it is a rousing and very well orchestrated example marked “Vivace con cuoco” (lively with fire), as if the composer wanted to make an assertive statement from the get-go. In the hands of the Wiener Philharmoniker, the piece is as much at home at the New Year’s Day event as a work by any relation of the Strauß family might be.
As he was about to mount the podium to conduct the „Blue Danube,“ Muti delivered a message of peace. “What we can contribute to peace, beauty and harmony is little, but very important,” he said. “We need music more than ever because it is medicine for the soul.”
Together, he and the musicians wished the world “Prosit Neujahr.”
The final encore is, of course, always the “Radetzky-Marsch” (“Radetzky March”). Called by some “the Marseillaise of conservatism,” many Austrian families – mine included – hold it in a special place of honor, considering it to be as much of an anthem as “God Bless America” is in the United States. (Another unofficial Austrian anthem is “The Beautiful Blue Danube,” and don’t allow me to deliver a polemic on how the Germans stole our Kaiserhymne, written by Joseph Haydn, and sullied it during the Second World War.)
Later on Wednesday, the Wiener Philharmoniker announced that the 2026 New Year’s Concert will be conducted by the well-known conductor and pianist Yannick Nezet-Seguin, the first openly gay music director of the Metropolitan Opera, the Orchestre Métropolitain of Montréal, and the Philadelphia Orchestra, in his first appearance leading this world-renowned event.
(Photos: Accura Media Group)
