What does the waltz mean to you? For most, when listening to its more familiar manifestations – Strauss’s Blue Danube, for example – it epitomises elegant civility, an untroubled charm and order, gowns and gilded ballrooms, men in tails. The connotations it conjures up – not necessarily wrong but, like most things, coming with a caveat – have offered inspiration to creative minds as 
diverse as Ravel, Schoenberg and 
film director Stanley Kubrick, while the music itself continues to intrigue and fascinate conductors from Nikolaus Harnoncourt to Franz Welser‑Möst. All play a part in Philip Clark’s engaging exploration of the musical form’s history for this month’s cover story.

Every year Viennese society – and millions of music lovers worldwide, via the traditional broadcast – gravitate towards the waltz for the annual New Year’s Concert. And thus begins another year of music-making. The slightly arbitrary nature of a calendar flipping over doesn’t inform musical life as much as many other ‘years’, be they concert seasons or academic or liturgical ones, but it does usher in the anniversaries and this year is rich in them – Verdi, Wagner and Britten chief among them (though I hope also to hear some additional Dowland and Gesualdo programmed). We begin our 
own 2013 composer celebrations in this issue with a feature about the Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski, born, like Britten, in 1913.

Anniversaries at their most imaginative can encourage an evaluation and advocacy of composers perhaps lesser known or lesser understood. The mighty statures of Verdi and Wagner are secure, though that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t grab at any extra excuse to revel in their mastery (as we shall certainly be doing in these pages). Britten is a different story: here is the chance, seized upon by the Britten-Pears Foundation and Aldeburgh Music, to make the case once and for all for the British composer as one of the most important, internationally, of the 20th century. 
All those who love Britten’s music should do everything they can to enthuse, argue and explore over the next 12 months, in the hope that both they and the wider artistic world will, in different ways, gain a better appreciation 
of his work. See you on the Suffolk coast.

martin.cullingford@haymarket.com