For millions of music-lovers the world over, no New Year's Day celebration would be complete without enjoying the annual concert of Strauss Family waltzes and other 19th-century Viennese bonbons which the Vienna Philharmonic has given in the Golden Hall of the Musikverein every January 1 since 1941, and which, thanks to global radio and television broadcasts, was shared this year (2014) with audiences in over 90 countries.

Following on from the 2011 release of Legendary Moments from the New Year's Concerts, Sony Classical's new 3-CD compilation Legendary Moments from the New Year's Concerts Vol. 2 surveys the past quarter-century of New Year's Concerts, stretching from Carlos Kleiber's legendary first appearance at the event in 1989 to Daniel Barenboim's return to the rostrum this year (2014) to preside over the orchestra's 74th annual New Year's Concert.

Framed by Kleiber's and Barenboim's 1989 and 2014 accounts of Johann Strauss II's iconic Blue Danube waltz and his father's rousing Radetzky March – the two inseparable encores with which each and every New Year's Concert comes to its rapturously foot-stamping, hand-clapping close – these 44 tracks encompass a glittering selection of waltzes, marches, polkas, galops and even an operetta overture by Vienna's immortal "Waltz King", Johann Strauss II, as well as by his father Johann I, brothers Josef and Eduard, and such distinguished Viennese contemporaries as Joseph Lanner (JSI's sometime colleague and later rival) and Joseph Hellmesberger II (an erstwhile Konzertmeister and later conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic).

Alongside such familiar Strauss Family favourites as JSII's imperial Kaiser-Walzer (Emperor Waltz), nostalgic Rosen aus dem Süden (Roses from the South) and thrilling Unter Donner und Blitz (Thunder and Lightning) polka, Josef's ethereal Sphärenklänge (Music of the Spheres) waltz, witty Plappermäulchen (Chatterbox) polka and delightful Dorfschwalben aus Österreich (Village Swallows from Austria) – with members of the orchestra providing virtuoso birdcalls on a variety of whistles – and Johann and Josef's collaborative Pizzicato Polka, notable rarities include JSII's Seid umschlungen Millionen (Be Embraced, You Millions) – a waltz whose title quotes from the same hymn to universal brotherhood, namely Schiller's ode To Joy, that Beethoven set in the finale of his "Choral" Symphony, and a work which that tireless peace activist Daniel Barenboim specially chose for his 2014 programme to mark the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War.

Besides Kleiber and Barenboim, the list of other star conductors featured on these three discs (and bonus DVD) reads like a Who's Who of the great maestros of our age, ranging from Lorin Maazel – the first guest conductor invited to preside over a New Year's Concert following the 25-year reign of the Vienna Philharmonic's legendary concertmaster Willi Boskovsky – via Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Mariss Jansons and Georges Prêtre, all the way to Franz Welser-Möst, the current music director of the Vienna State Opera (whose orchestra forms the pool from which the Vienna Philharmonic's players are drawn) and the latest recruit to the elite list of 15 conductors who have been chosen over the past 74 years to direct the Vienna Philharmonic's annual New Year's Concert and to wish the world, on its behalf, a very happy and echt Wienerisch "Prosit Neujahr!"