This New Year’s Eve, as on all New Year’s Eves within recent memory, the major orchestras of the world will perform pops concerts consisting of breezy old pieces from the 19th century, most of them with dance pedigrees: polkas, marches, quadrilles, and, of course, waltzes.
Among the myriad waltzes likely to be on the New Year’s programs of everyone from the Vienna Philharmonic to your local symphony orchestra is one work that is absolutely required. Leaving it out would be like citing the works of Homer and not mentioning the Odyssey: “An der schönen blauen Donau,” known in English as “The Blue Danube,” composed by Johann Strauss II (1825–1899) in 1866.
