Strauss, J, II: Prinz Methusalem 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.