It will be an exuberant and tinglingly fresh start to the new year! The traditional New Year's concert, full of sparkling waltzes and polkas, will for once not be poured with champagne - but with water...

We start off the new year with the jubilant strings and trumpet sounds of Handel’s Water Music Suite, written to lend even more grandeur to a ‘river party’ organised by King George I on the Thames. This is followed by a voyage along the winding Vltava (Moldau) River in the symphonic poem Vltava by Smetana, and a touch of magic with Paul Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

Leopold Mozart’s Schlittenfahrt (Sleigh Ride) carries us off through a snowy winter landscape, complete with bells and the cracking of whips in the background. A swinging transition to airy polkas and catchy waltz tunes by the Strauss family. Happy New Year!