Four Centuries of Great Music December 31, 2023 New Year's Eve and New Year's Day in Great Music

Today on Four Centuries of Great Music we are celebrating New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day in great music.

We open with Johann Strauss Sr. Radetzky March.  Why?  Because this work is always played at the New Year’s Day concert in Vienna.  It is always accompanied by the audience clapping - almost in time to the beat.  Here is Willi Boskovsky conducting appropriately the Vienna Philharmonic in a performance of the Radetzky March from the album Strauss: Waltzes. Polkas and Marches   London Records/Decca

Next on this celebration of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day in great music is a tune named after the favorite beverage on New Year’s Eve - yes Champagne.  This is the Champagne Polka by Johann Strauss Jr. as performed by Peter Guth conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from the album Favorites from the Classics, Vol. 7 Johann Strauss Jr’s Greatest Hits.  Readers Digest Association


Next on this celebration of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day in great music is a work named after an important part of the New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day celebration that happens at the stroke of midnight.  And that is fireworks.  This is Handel’s Royal Fireworks Music.  Of course originally s King George II commissioned Handel to write music celebrating the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) which ended the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48). Its first performance preceded a fireworks display as part of the outdoor festival celebrating the end of the war.  But now we associate fireworks with the end of each year.

It is in seven movements Overture (marked adagio), Allegro Lentement. Bouree, La Paix (marked Largo alla siciliana), La Rejouissance and two minuets

Here is a performance of George Frideric Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks HWV 351 by the B'Rock Orchestra conducted by Dmitry Sinkovsky from the album Handel Water & Fire


Lets begin this second half hour of today’s Four Centuries of Great music in which we are celebrating New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day in great music with two works from the 21st Century Paul Reale’s New Year, the third movement from his holiday suite for violin and piano and Allen Shawn’s New Year’s Resolution for piano.

Here is a performance of Paul Reale’s New Year, the third movement from his holiday suite for violin and piano featuring Jessica Mathaes, violin & Colette Valentine, piano from the album Paul Reale: Seven Deadly Sins, Celtic Wedding, Holiday Suite and Composer’s Reminiscences

Next is the performance of Allen Shawn’s New Year’s Resolution as performed by the composer Allen Shawn from the album Improvisation Diary 2020   


Next on Four Centuries of Great Music and our celebration of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day in great music we move backward in time to the 20th century with  the 5th movement from Sergei Prokofiev’s Waltz Suite, Op. 110 entitled Waltz for the New Year's Ball (originally from his work War and Peace, Op. 91) here performed by the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo conducted by Marin Alsop from the album Prokofiev: Symphony No. 6, Op. 111 & Waltz Suite, Op. 110    Naxos Recordings


English composer William Boyce was the leading English composer at the time of Handel.  He wrote a set of symphonies that are little gems. These are small symphonies, just 7 or 8 minutes in length, and are very much predecessors to the modern symphony as we know it in the hands of Haydn.  Boyce’s collection of Eight Symphonies was published in 1760 and reflected work he’s been doing between 1739 and 1756.  The first of these is derived from the overture to the New Year’s Ode, ‘Hail, hail, auspicious day’, written to welcome in 1756.  It is in three short movements marked  Allegro, Moderato e dolce and Allegro

Here is a performance of William Boyce’s Symphony No. 1 in B-Flat Major, Op. 2 by the Aradia Ensemble conducted by Kevin Mallon from the album Boyce: Eight Symphonies, Op. 2. Naxos Recordings

As part of his set of 44 Duos for 2 Violins, Béla Bartók included 4 New Year’s Greetings, specifically numbers 21, 29, 30 and 31. The entire set of duos is intended as pedagogical work for two violins. Each work is based on a folk song, but with challenges for the players, such as dissonance, polytonality, and pieces written in canon.  

Here is a performance of these four New Year’s Greetings of Béla Bartók: 44 Duos for 2 Violins, specifically numbers 21, 29, 30 and 31 by Duo Landon from the album Béla Bartók: 44 Duos for Two Violins, Sz. 98    MSR Classics

The English composer Benjamin Britten had a brother Robert who was a schoolmaster. Benjamin wrote a series of songs for treble voices for Robert’s choirs, including a new year carol, with a text about the actions of the new year. This is found in Benjamin Britten’s Friday Afternoons, Op. 7: specifically No. 5: A New Year Carol

It opens with the line ‘Here we bring new water from the well’ referring to an Irish tradition where no water should be drawn from a well after dark on New Year’s Eve. One of the closing lines is particularly poignant: “Open you the East Door, and let the New Year in.’

Here is a performance of Friday Afternoons, Op. 7: No. 5: A New Year Carol by Rachel Masters and The Cambridge Singers conducted by John Rutter from the album The Cambridge Singers Christmas Album Collegium Records

Benjamin Britten: Friday Afternoons, Op. 7: No. 5: A New Year Carol
Rachel Masters and The Cambridge Singers conducted by John Rutter    The Cambridge Singers Christmas Album     Collegium Records


Let’s open this second hour of Four Centuries of Great Music celebrating New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day with JOHANNES BRAHMS: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D major op. 77.  And you ask what does JOHANNES BRAHMS: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D major op. 77 have to do with either New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day?  Well it was premiered in Leipzig on January 1, 1879, by Brahms’ friend violinist Joseph Joachim.  Joachim insisted on opening the concert with the Beethoven Violin Concerto, written in the same key, and closing with the Brahms.  Joachim's decision could be understandable because Joachim is quoted as calling the Beethoven concerto “greatest, most uncompromising” and the Brahms concerto as “vies with it [the Beethoven Concerto] in seriousness.  However Brahms complained that "it was a lot of D major—and not much else on the program."

Here is a performance of JOHANNES BRAHMS: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D major op. 77 by Lisa Batiashvili, violin and Christian Thielemann conducting the Staatskapelle Dresden    from the album Johannes Brahms: Violin Concerto in D Major - Clara Schumann: 3 Romances for Violin and Piano    Deutsche Grammophon


We are closing todays episode of Four Centuries of Great Music with Ernest Tomlinson “Fantasia on Auld Lang Syne”.  Robert Burns’s poem “Auld Lang Syne” and New Year’s Eve are as inseparable as Dodge and Ram, Rodgers and Hammerstein or Barnes and Noble.  Burns wrote it in 1788 though it is based on an older Scottish folk song. The music? That’s less than straightforward. Its original composer remains a moot point with various contesting claimants. There’s no puzzle, though, about the origins of this witty 20-minute fantasy using the tune. It
was composed in 1976 by the Lancashire-born Ernest Tomlinson (1924-2015), one of the Great Britain’s great light music composers. It is, musically speaking, a quodlibet – that is a composition that combines several different melodies in counterpoint, usually in a lighthearted manner. It is said that Tomlinson includes in the score no less than 152 references to other popular and classical works! How many can you spot?

Here is a performance of Ernest Tomlinson “Fantasia on Auld Lang Syne” as performed by Royal Ballet Sinfonia conducted by Gavin Sutherland from the album British By Arrangement 2    White Line Records