Favourite Waltzes, Polkas and Overtures
from the programmes of the Vienna New Year Concerts 1939-1998

The association of New Year's Day with Vienna and the music of the Strauss family is so widespread and so popular (the annual concert in the magnificent Musikverein is regularly relayed to millions of listeners and television viewers the world over) that many assume it to be a tradition going back to the days of the Strausses themselves, and to have been a regular highlight in the life of the famous Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Not so. Indeed it was many decades before the names of Strauss and the Vienna Philharmonic were linked at all. Not until 1925 did the orchestra give an all-Strauss programme, and it was only in the late '30s that the celebrated New Year's Day connection was established by the conductor Clemens Kraus. These concerts and their attendant publicity have done more than any other single undertaking to familiarise the public not only