Happy 2026!
programme notes
written by JASPER CROONEN
Ferdinand Hérold Zampa: Overture (1831)
Joseph Haydn Keyboard Concerto No. 11 in D major, Hob. XVIII:11: I. Vivace, III. Rondo all'Ungarese (1784)
Carl Maria von Weber Konzertstück in F minor, Op. 79 (1821): Presto gioioso
Antonín Dvořák Slavonic Dances, Op. 72: No. 8 'Sousedská' in A flat major: Grazioso e lento, No. 7 'Kolo' in C major: Allegro vivace
Johann Strauss, Jr Annen-Polka, Op. 117 (1852)
Johann Strauss, Jr. Rosen aus dem Süden, Op. 388 (1880)
Johann Strauss, Jr. Champagner-Polka, Op. 211 (1858)
Johann Strauss, Jr. Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald, Op. 325 (1868)
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08.01.2026 FLAGEY BRUSSELS
09.01.2026 IEPER HET PERRON
11.01.2026 BRUGGE CONCERTGEBOUW
What does your first of January look like? A family gathering with recited New Year’s letters? Announcing good resolutions over breakfast in bed? A day off among friends, still echoing with the throb of last night’s bubbles? Wading through the mud at the cyclocross in Baal? Or tuning your ears to Vienna for the New Year’s Concert of the Wiener Philharmoniker?
New Year's concert
On the very first day of the new year, the traditional concert in the gleaming Goldener Saal stands as one of the essential fixtures of the musical season. An experience steeped in custom: the hall invariably overflowing with flowers, Katelijne Boon guiding television-watching (and radio-listening) Flanders through the event, Austria’s tourist office pulling out all the stops with promotional vistas of pastoral beauty… and a programme that has remained largely unchanged for more than a century. The waltzes of the Strauss family are inescapable.
That repertoire is rooted in the concert’s history. The first Neujahrskonzert, in 1939, was organised to lift the morale of soldiers as the Second World War had just erupted, and to help fill the war chest. Cheerful tunes capable of drawing crowds were therefore indispensable. Today, the musical celebration has shed much of that dark origin, though the Strausses’ waltzes remain central to the event.
Not to worry: at our own New Year’s concert, Happy 2026!, favourites such as the Champagner-Polka, the Radetzky March and Annen-Polka will certainly be there. Yet every year we also like to introduce an element of surprise, and this time we find that distinctive twist precisely within tradition.
Worldwide and centuries old
On 8 January (Flagey), 9 January (Ypres) and 11 January (Bruges), we welcome Théo Ould. The French musician is a specialist of the accordion, an instrument whose bellows we have associated with traditional music for centuries.
The technique behind the instrument is thousands of years old. By pushing a stream of air past a set of free reeds, they begin to vibrate and produce sound. The sheng, an ancient Chinese instrument dating back to the second millennium BC, works on this principle, as do harmonicas, which therefore belong to the same family of instruments. In the case of the accordion, the musician does not blow the air himself but drives it across the reeds by drawing out and compressing the bellows of the instrument.
Although the idea is age-old, the accordion only became popular in the first half of the nineteenth century. Instrument makers in Austria, Belgium, France and Italy experimented with adding buttons and keyboards to alter the activated reeds—and thus the pitch. The earliest attempts were rudimentary, but the instrument was quickly refined, giving rise to an astonishing variety of types to accommodate the many different playing techniques.
The accordion soon embarked on a journey around the world. On every continent it became anchored in traditional repertoires. In the Americas it appears in Brazilian forró and Argentine tango, in the zydeco of Louisiana and as an accompanying instrument among Inuit communities; in Asia it now sounds in Mor Iam ensembles from Laos and in Korean ppongjjak songs; in Africa it has become part of Angola’s rebita, the umteyo dances of the Xhosa peoples in South Africa, and the taraab ensembles of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania; and naturally, throughout Europe it thrives in the Bohemian polka, the Romanian csárdás, the French musette and the Italian tarantella.
An atypical tradition
Despite that global appeal, it took a relatively long time for composers in the Western European tradition to embrace the instrument. Only at the beginning of the twentieth century did the bellows break free from the café atmosphere and earn a place on the concert stage. As conservatories grew increasingly interested, playing technique became professionalised and composers slowly began writing for it. Paul Hindemith was one of the first, adding an accordion to the chamber orchestra in his Kammermusik No. 1 in 1922, but it was above all from the mid-century onward that the repertoire flourished, with works by, among others, Alban Berg—who used the instrument in Wozzec —Henry Cowell, Pauline Oliveros and Luciano Berio.
Since we do not wish to overwhelm you with the avant-garde at the very start of the new year—that awaits you at the next event in our Lab series on 30 January—we are approaching the New Year’s concert from a subtly different angle. We unleash Théo Ould on classical repertoire originally written for piano, which here acquires a gently sighing resonance. Haydn and von Weber with a hint of the folk tradition. Two forms of heritage meeting to create something entirely unorthodox.
