Rubén Gimeno, Conductor
 
Héctor Berlioz                         Hungarian March
Otto Nicolai                             The Merry Wives of Windsor (overture)
Camille Saint-Saëns            Danse macabre, op. 40
Leroy Anderson                      Sleigh Ride
Leroy Anderson                      Song of the Bells
Johann Strauss II                   El Gypsy Baron (overture)
Josef Strauss                          Fire-proof! (French Polka)
Johann Strauss                      Czardas, ballet music from the Opera Ritter Pazman
Johann Strauss                      The Thousand and one Nights (waltz)

Once again we enter the world of the annual Festival of Waltzes and Dances, which the OSV has pioneered in this country. A profoundly participative concert, it brings the magic of the music everyone wishes to listen to at this time, with the obligatory composers and encores, and the inevitable applause with which we celebrate the rite of closure and re-opening of the annual cycle. It is festive music which shows us all the true nature of a concert as an opportunity for renovation, since it is through the triple metre of the waltz that we discover the cyclical character of the wheel of life. Lovers of the swirling dance will understand what I am saying, and sceptics only have to come back the following year to discover how the OSV renews its invocation of the three magical numbers which spin us into the infinite. Rubén Gimeno will teach us to count to three.