Constanze Geiger’s Waltz at the 2025 Vienna New Year’s Concert
On 1 January 2025, the Vienna Philharmonic included music by a woman composer in its New Year’s Concert for the first time. Constanze Geiger had written the selected Ferdinandus-Walzer in 1848, aged twelve.
A new name in a familiar celebration
Riccardo Muti led the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Concert in the Golden Hall of the Musikverein on 1 January 2025. The program marked the bicentenary of Johann Strauss II’s birth and drew on the Strauss family and their musical surroundings. Among those familiar names was a significant addition: Constanze Geiger. Her Ferdinandus-Walzer became the first composition by a woman to be performed in this particular concert tradition. Concert and program.
The twelve-year-old behind the waltz
Geiger composed the waltz in 1848, when she was twelve. The orchestra’s program notes place its first performance at Vienna’s Sofienbadsaal and identify Johann Strauss I as the conductor. Her connection with the Strauss world was therefore direct, rather than something invented for a modern commemorative program. She worked as a composer, pianist and actress, and her musical education included study with Simon Sechter. The child’s composition belonged to an active professional network. Official program notes.
Rediscovery on an international stage
An annual concert can make its chosen repertory seem timeless. Yet each program is a selection, and the people left out of that selection can become less visible over generations. Including Geiger did more than add an unfamiliar tune: it restored a woman’s work to a musical setting with which she had historical ties. The distinction needs care. This was a first for the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Concert, not the first time an orchestra had ever performed a woman’s music.
A performance, not a new composition
The event commemorated here is the 2025 performance. The music itself was already more than a century and a half old, and Geiger had died in 1890. That distance is part of the story: an early achievement can wait a remarkably long time for renewed attention. Austrian broadcaster ORF reported the concert and its premiere within the annual series. The illustration evokes the modern Golden Hall performance rather than Geiger’s childhood or the original 1848 occasion. Contemporary report.
Johann Strauss- The Blue Danube (Piano Solo)
Doctor'sIn
This later solo-piano performance evokes Vienna’s waltz tradition and a familiar encore in the concert’s repertoire. It is not Geiger’s Ferdinandus-Walzer or a recording from the 2025 concert.
Listen on SoundCloud ↗Follow the evidence.
- Sony Classical: New Year’s Concert 2025 ↗
- Vienna Philharmonic: 2025 official press kit and program notes ↗
- ORF: New Year’s Concert with Muti and a premiere ↗
AI-assisted writing, with institutional and primary sources. Illustration is a reconstruction, not an archival photograph. Published November 1, 2026; updated November 1, 2026. Our approach
