Strauss, J, II: Das Spitzentuch der Königin Overture

During the 1950s, 60s and 70s, Decca recorded a number of albums with some of its key conductors of Overtures. Many of these were singled out by the press for their terrific sound quality (the fabled ‘Decca Sound’) and for their often adventurous programming. Some of them also included entr’actes and intermezzi. Prized as collectors’ items, many of the original LPs exchange hands at high prices. And most of these reissues, in Decca Eloquence’s ‘Romantic Overtures’ series appear in CD, in part or whole, for the first time.

Romantic Overtures – Volume 4 is a Viennese celebration with a violinist / conductor synonymous with the waltz and everything that was echt-nineteenth century Vienna: Willi Boskovsky. Boskovsky had a lengthy association with Decca, conducting for them not only a volley of ‘New Year’ recordings of waltzes, polkas and marches by the Strauss Dynasty, but also the music of Mozart, and much chamber music too, with the Vienna Octet. At the centre of this collection is his fabled LP ‘Overtures of Old Vienna’, and it goes on to include other overtures recorded as part of his New Year albums, all of it extremely stylish and ‘of the age’, as it were.

Berlin 1950/1952

Ferenc Fricsay's love of the waltzes by Johann Strauss II exemplifies his opinion that there is no difference between ‘popular’ and ‘serious’ music but, if needs be, between good and bad music.Thanks to his own musical education and his first post as conductor of a military band in Szeged, he was very familiar with the repertoire and the musical world of 19th century Vienna.When the 34-year-old was called to post-war Berlin in order to help rebuild musical life in the western part of the destroyed city as director of the newly founded RIAS Symphony Orchestra, he passionately performed the music of Strauss from the outset.This is also documented by his ravishing recording of Die Fledermaus [see audite 23.411]. This CD presents a representative cross-section of the most beautiful and famous waltzes and polkas by Strauss recorded between 1950 and 1952, issued here for the first time. In these, not only do Fricsay's (in)famously precise rehearsal methods become perceptible but also his unique talent of improvisation, i.e. an art of interpretation where the highest degree of precision becomes completely natural, and spontaneous, music-making.