Some years back, Gerard Schwarz changed his Seattle Symphony New Year’s programming from pops faves to Beethoven’s Ninth—perhaps inspired by Japanese custom, where concert halls, we hear, are packed at year’s end for the composer’s resounding 1824 setting of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy.” (One positive legacy, perhaps, of their alliance with Germany.) But if you miss the Viennese champagne music of the Strauss family and their colleagues, selections from Brahms’ lilac-scented homage, his Liebeslieder Waltzes, open the evening. Tickets, including dancing to Orchestra Zarabanda afterward and a midnight countdown, start at $50; add a 6:30 p.m. dinner for $69. GAVIN BORCHERT

Wed., Dec. 30, 7:30 p.m.; Thu., Dec. 31, 9 p.m.; Sat., Jan. 2, 8 p.m.; Sun., Jan. 3, 2 p.m., 2009