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A happy smile lit up the face of every listener, caused by the musical excitement of the wonderful waltz rhythms\u2019. The reviewer\u2019s comments refer to a \u2018special concert\u2019 mounted by the Vienna Philharmonic in the famous Golden Hall of the city\u2019s Musikverein<\/a><\/strong> on the morning of 31 December 1939, a Sunday. Billed as a \u2018New Year\u2019s Eve Concert\u2019, the event switched to 1 January in 1941, spawning an unbroken run of over 80 Vienna New Year concerts<\/a><\/strong> which continues to the present.<\/p> The date of that first concert in 1939, the only one not to happen on New Year\u2019s Day, is significant. Just four months earlier, the Second World War had erupted, so the intention was to lift morale among the German-speaking nations by broadcasting the Vienna concert on the radio. Proceeds from ticket sales would, additionally, be donated to a \u2018Kriegswinterhilfswerk\u2019 (\u2018Winter war relief scheme\u2019) initiated by the F\u00fchrer himself, Adolf Hitler.<\/p> And what better way to lift the spirits than the sparkling, infectiously rhythmic music of Johann Strauss II, the \u2018waltz king\u2019 of 19th-century Vienna? It now seems an obvious choice, but it was not viewed that way at the time. Large sections of the orchestra disliked playing Strauss family music, viewing it as light and frivolous when set alongside Beethoven<\/a><\/strong>, Brahms<\/a><\/strong> or Bruckner<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p> In the event, all ten items in the 1939 concert \u2013 lasting about half as long as today\u2019s glitzy, well-heeled successor \u2013 were by Johann Strauss Jr, and included such well-known pieces as the Emperor Waltz, Pizzicato-Polka<\/i> and Tales from the Vienna Woods<\/i>. Just as interesting, however, are the pieces not performed on that December morning, which have since become immovable staples of the Vienna New Year experience. <\/p> There was no Blue Danube Waltz<\/i>, for instance \u2013 that was first performed at the 1945 concert. Nor was the Radetzky March<\/i> included \u2013 nowadays it\u2019s invariably a crowd-pleasing encore, politely clapped along to. In 1939, the scheduled concert ended with the overture to Strauss\u2019s operetta Die Fledermaus<\/i> \u2013 \u2018brilliantly played\u2019, as one newspaper recorded.<\/p> The conductor of that brilliant performance was the Austrian Clemens Krauss, and a flavour of how the Vienna Philharmonic sounded under his baton can be gleaned from his superbly athletic recordings of Johann Strauss\u2019s music. <\/p>What was the programme at the very first Vienna New Year’s Day Concert?<\/h2>