Strauss, J, I: Beliebte Annen - Polka Op. 137

In a career that spanned a period from the 1820s until his death in 1849, the older Johann Strauss established an unrivalled position for himself among composers and performers of dance music in Vienna.

This fourteenth volume in Marco Polo’s ongoing Johann Strauss I Edition presents several waltzes from the early 1840s, including Die Tanzmeister, first performed at the Katharine Ball at the Sperl on 24th November 1841, Stadt und Landleben, first performed at a garden festival at the Sperl on 5th July 1841, and one of Strauss’ most popular pieces, the Beliebte Annen-Polka, written in honour of the Empress Maria Anna.

5 April 2008 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Herbert von Karajan, the legendary Austrian-born conductor who achieved a position of musical supremacy as director of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra that made him one of the most famous and celebrated conductors of the second half of the twentieth century.

While the majority of his symphonic recordings were made for Deutsche Grammophon, von Karajan also recorded for Decca and EMI during the 1950s and 1960s. This set is reissued to mark this momentous anniversary and contains all of his orchestral recordings made with the Vienna Philharmonic for Decca during the late 1950s/early 1960s.

One of the most celebrated of these – and a composer he was closely identified with, is Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra – a recording heard by countless people around the globe as the opening was used on the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.