Classical music: Happy New Year! Viennese waltzes for orchestra by the Strauss Family aren’t the only ones suitable for seeing out the old year and ringing in the new. Here are waltzes by Chopin and Schubert played by Arthur Rubinstein, Vladimir Horowitz and Stephen Hough. What waltzes are your favorites?

By Jacob Stockinger

Today is January 1, 2014.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Here is a reminder that “New Year’s Day From Vienna,” with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (below) performing waltzes, polkas and marches of the Strauss Family under the baton of Daniel Barenboim, will be broadcast live this morning at 10 a.m. CST on Wisconsin Public Radio, and then air at 1:30-3 p.m. and again at 7-8:30 p.m. on Wisconsin Public Television.

As always the Strauss Family will be the featured stars. But while they made the waltz a livelihood and trademark, there are other outstanding waltz composers.

Two of my favorite waltz composers are Frederic Chopin and Franz Schubert, both of whom found the magic family to combine good cheer and glamor as well as bittersweet poignancy.

So here are two of my favorite sad waltzes both by Chopin. First, there is the so-called “Farewell” Waltz in A-flat Major, Op. 69, supposedly written in the memory of a fellow student who was killed in the Polish rebellion by Russian troops. Here it is played in a beautifully restrained manner by British pianist Stephen Hough:

And then here is the Op. 34, No 2 in A minor, played by Arthur Rubinstein:

As for ringing in the New Year, here is one of the “Brilliant Waltzes” by Chopin often used by Arthur Rubinstein to start or end a recital:

More heartbreaking waltzes come from Franz Schubert in his “Noble and Sentimental” Waltzes, a title later borrowed ironically by Maurice Ravel. Here are some of those Schubert waltzes – both cheerful and dark — in one of those wonderful scissors-and-paste jobs, a free-wheeling transcription, by Franz Liszt in the “Soiree de Vienne No. 6” and played incomparably by Vladimir Horowitz.

Hope you enjoy them

Farewell to 2013.

Cheers to 2014.

What are your favorite sad and happy waltzes?

The Ear wants to hear.

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Posted in Classical music
Tags: Arthur Rubinstein, Chopin, Daniel Barenboim, Franz Schubert, Frédéric Chopin, Liszt, Maurice Ravel, New Year, New Year's Day, Stephen Hough, Strauss Family, Vienna, Vienna Philharmonic, Vladimir Horowitz, wisconsin public radio, Wisconsin Public Television