"Blue Danube Waltz" Presented

Johann Strauss the younger (1825-1899), the Austrian composer known as the Waltz King, dominated the dance music of nineteenth-century Vienna. In 1867 he introduced An der schonen blauen Donau, known in English as the Blue Danube Waltz, a work first performed in a choral version before it achieved lasting fame as an orchestral piece.

The waltz unfolds as a sequence of linked melodies framed by a gently rocking introduction and a sweeping coda. Its initial reception was modest, but the orchestral version soon won enormous popularity and came to be regarded as an unofficial anthem of Vienna and of Austria itself.

The Blue Danube became one of the most familiar and beloved works in European music, a fixture of concert programs and New Year celebrations. Strauss, who composed hundreds of waltzes, polkas, and operettas, secured through it a permanent place in the popular musical imagination.