I am so grateful to you for this recommendation, it's been saving me so much time and trouble. I'm from Austria (from Graz like Stolz in fact, so I really should have thought of him myself) and before you recommended Stolz, it was always a bit of a hassle to find recordings that felt just right, but Stolz hits it out of the park every single time. There are one or two pieces where I know recordings I prefer even more, but now I always know I can rely on Stolz, so thank you.
This album came up randomly on Apple Music as a recommendation, and when the Rosas waltz came on I couldn't believe my ears, since I had heard it endlessly and never once thought about where it came from. Love this record to death.
These are the composers I'm indebted to for the blossoming of my interest in classical musical and which I've never deserted. You can give me Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Wagner, Verdi, Mahler (you name it), but as soon as a waltz, polka or march starts playing, there's nothing more for me. I possess this Stolz box in its early incarnation, Naxos/Marco Polo Johann, Josef and Eduard Strauss, also the Ziehrer series on the same label as well as Waldteufel and the Komzak's.
My Strauss collection (excluding Richard) is a 2 disc DG "Panorama" with a disc of Johann Strauss waltzes conducted by Karajan, Abbado, Maazel, Boskovsky and Bohm with the Vienna Philharmonic and one disc of Die Fledermaus highlights with the Bavarian State Orchestra conducted by Carlos Kleiber. Used copies available starting at $2.
Thanks so much for taking the time to explore this set, and it's definitely worth considering. Boskovsky also has a box on EMI/Warner called Ballroom Classics, whose 11 discs are very similar to this Stolz box. At 11 discs and mostly featuring the pickup band from Vienna that Boskovsky used for EMI, it's another great overview of this era and genre. I suspect that some collectors may already have some Boskovsky on EMI or Decca, and for that reason, this current box may well prove the more interesting and unique purchase.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Absolutely true. But I found an unopened copy for 20 dollars, and it may yet reappear. The Decca set drifts aimlessly in and out of print too, and it was once available as a 5-disc box called something like the Ultimate Strauss. Who knows, maybe we can have everything available at once someday (this is beyond unlikely).
Greetings David. The missus and I were shaking with laughter at your portrait of the audience at a New Year's Day concert in Wien. Haven't attended one. (I won't lie. I'd like to attend.) Been to several concerts at VPO's fabled concert hall, though. The music-making was a treat (save for a dreary couple of concerts given by Welser-Most and the great Cleveland Orchestra) - but the Wiener audience have a, shall we say, unique vibe all their own... BEST, and thanks gain for the tip re the Ormandy /Philly box set. What a mouthwatering tracklisting.
in this box he have the op 1 ''Sinngedichte, Walzer''of johann strauss jr...this is my favorite walz....i discover this composition in the 1972 bbc tv series called ''the strauss''....and my best new years concert is the 1979 concert with willy bokowsky
I agree about the creepiness of the New Year's concerts. Perhaps once there was genuine joy in this tradition, but now attendance seems to be purely a status thing. Book your seat years in advance, to sit in a cold hall watching hungover musicians work their way through the standards!
Clemens Krauss began the New Years Day concerts tradition in Vienna in 1939. Decca recorded early1950s hi-fi LPs with Krauss and the VPO. The Eloquence CD compilation sounds great, and Krauss' sense of Viennese style is incomparable.
Thanks, David. I’ve long treasured the vinyl box with the glossy cover called “The Musical Magic of Vienna” and I’m happy to see a version of that on CD. Thanks for mentioning Mitch Miller in the same program! We have interesting stories to share, I’m sure. Btw, aren’t you at least a little fascinated by Klemperer’s Fledermaus overture?! Echt in a totally non-echt way, I guess! Enjoy your videos a great deal. Thanks.
Unfortunately this box omits the infamous Schlampenmarsch (op. 752). This little known piece was composed by Strauss after a well known upper-class brothel was closed down by the imperial authorities, upon which its employees staged a public protest in the streets of Vienna. Unfortunately it yet has to make it on a New Year concert program.
What do you mean "finally?!" You'd think I've been doing this for years instead of only seven months! Do you know how much music there is out there? And recordings? We're just getting started! 😜
Please, please --- time to speak up on the "classical side" of Mitch Miller that has been neglected on CD. If you look hard enough, one might find the Stokowski Swan of Tuonela or Largo from Dvorak's New World (RCA), but no Vaughan-Williams Oboe Concerto (Mercury) or Stravinsky Pastorale (with Szigeti on Columbia). Sony (beneficiary of both U.S. Columbia and RCA catalogs) could easily do a one or two CD compilation, but probably won't.
You ABSOLUTELY have to have a monologue on these New year concerts but not before you get a good look at the London PROMS...it's the same kind of yuck...
I thought the New years day concert without the audience was of very high standard under Muti. Maybe players were denied the booze beforehand. Once a year feast is enough of this music. Otherwise it's like binging on chocolate eclairs
David, where were you when I bought the Vienna Philharmonic’s live New Year’s Concert box set on Sony a few years ago!? Hours and hours of polite, snooty clapping after every piece... ugh.
I can't sit through one of those New Year's Concerts. I started streaming one that is on PBS around the beginning of the year and made it through about 3 pieces before I'd had enough.
Phew. This is all you really need. I recall there was a complete box set of Strauss Viennese music many years ago. Who on earth would sit through that, completely insane.
You're certainly right: nobody should sit through a complete Strauß music box set! In my opinion, (although I admit that as an Austrian and as a Strauß jr fan since my early childhood, I am biased), "sitting through it" is not really the point of this type of music. Yes, Strauß jr departed from tradition by starting to write waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, etc. not purely as dance music but also as concert pieces, but even so, this type of Viennese music is not made for sitting down with the entire Strauß II box set and listening to it all, it's meant to be danced to - and since there is still quite a prominent ball culture in Austria, that actually does still happen.
2:47 I like Strauss waltzes, but I hate the Vienna New Year's concerts, almost with a passion. I want one of these avant-garde anti-bourgeois conductors that, after everything (which means after Blue Danube and Radetzky March), to lock the audience in, and conduct Ravel's La Valse! Only after that to let the audience go.
I am so grateful to you for this recommendation, it's been saving me so much time and trouble. I'm from Austria (from Graz like Stolz in fact, so I really should have thought of him myself) and before you recommended Stolz, it was always a bit of a hassle to find recordings that felt just right, but Stolz hits it out of the park every single time. There are one or two pieces where I know recordings I prefer even more, but now I always know I can rely on Stolz, so thank you.
This album came up randomly on Apple Music as a recommendation, and when the Rosas waltz came on I couldn't believe my ears, since I had heard it endlessly and never once thought about where it came from. Love this record to death.
These are the composers I'm indebted to for the blossoming of my interest in classical musical and which I've never deserted. You can give me Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Wagner, Verdi, Mahler (you name it), but as soon as a waltz, polka or march starts playing, there's nothing more for me. I possess this Stolz box in its early incarnation, Naxos/Marco Polo Johann, Josef and Eduard Strauss, also the Ziehrer series on the same label as well as Waldteufel and the Komzak's.
Ziehrer is brilliant, and Waldteufel is the best 🙂
My Strauss collection (excluding Richard) is a 2 disc DG "Panorama" with a disc of Johann Strauss waltzes conducted by Karajan, Abbado, Maazel, Boskovsky and Bohm with the Vienna Philharmonic and one disc of Die Fledermaus highlights with the Bavarian State Orchestra conducted by Carlos Kleiber. Used copies available starting at $2.
Dave, I suggest you do a survey of "Die Fledermaus" and "Merry Widow" recordings. Those are the most important Viennese operettas.
Thanks so much for taking the time to explore this set, and it's definitely worth considering.
Boskovsky also has a box on EMI/Warner called Ballroom Classics, whose 11 discs are very similar to this Stolz box. At 11 discs and mostly featuring the pickup band from Vienna that Boskovsky used for EMI, it's another great overview of this era and genre.
I suspect that some collectors may already have some Boskovsky on EMI or Decca, and for that reason, this current box may well prove the more interesting and unique purchase.
And the EMI set is very out of print at present, at least as far as I can tell.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Absolutely true. But I found an unopened copy for 20 dollars, and it may yet reappear. The Decca set drifts aimlessly in and out of print too, and it was once available as a 5-disc box called something like the Ultimate Strauss. Who knows, maybe we can have everything available at once someday (this is beyond unlikely).
Greetings David. The missus and I were shaking with laughter at your portrait of the audience at a New Year's Day concert in Wien. Haven't attended one. (I won't lie. I'd like to attend.) Been to several concerts at VPO's fabled concert hall, though. The music-making was a treat (save for a dreary couple of concerts given by Welser-Most and the great Cleveland Orchestra) - but the Wiener audience have a, shall we say, unique vibe all their own...
BEST,
and thanks gain for the tip re the Ormandy /Philly box set. What a mouthwatering tracklisting.
in this box he have the op 1 ''Sinngedichte, Walzer''of johann strauss jr...this is my favorite walz....i discover this composition in the 1972 bbc tv series called ''the strauss''....and my best new years concert is the 1979 concert with willy bokowsky
I agree about the creepiness of the New Year's concerts. Perhaps once there was genuine joy in this tradition, but now attendance seems to be purely a status thing. Book your seat years in advance, to sit in a cold hall watching hungover musicians work their way through the standards!
Clemens Krauss began the New Years Day concerts tradition in Vienna in 1939. Decca recorded early1950s hi-fi LPs with Krauss and the VPO. The Eloquence CD compilation sounds great, and Krauss' sense of Viennese style is incomparable.
Does the Stolz selection of Lanner include the waltz that appears in Stravinsky's Petrouska (and Oedipus Rex)?
Robert Stolz's recording of Die Fledermaus on RCA is excellent. (My first copy was on Everest by the way)
Thanks, David. I’ve long treasured the vinyl box with the glossy cover called “The Musical Magic of Vienna” and I’m happy to see a version of that on CD. Thanks for mentioning Mitch Miller in the same program! We have interesting stories to share, I’m sure. Btw, aren’t you at least a little fascinated by Klemperer’s Fledermaus overture?! Echt in a totally non-echt way, I guess! Enjoy your videos a great deal. Thanks.
There is another box "Wiener Musik by Robert Stolz" on RCA. Does anyone know if this contains the same recordings as the set David reviewed?
Haha! I though I was the only person to find those new-year concerts strangely creepy. They're kind of on a par with Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.
Where can I get that Stoltz set? I can't find it anywhere.
Amazon has it--or they did a few days ago. Look it up under Robert Stoltz Waltzes, Polkas.
Unfortunately this box omits the infamous Schlampenmarsch (op. 752). This little known piece was composed by Strauss after a well known upper-class brothel was closed down by the imperial authorities, upon which its employees staged a public protest in the streets of Vienna. Unfortunately it yet has to make it on a New Year concert program.
Thanks David! Finally😇
What do you mean "finally?!" You'd think I've been doing this for years instead of only seven months! Do you know how much music there is out there? And recordings? We're just getting started! 😜
@@DavesClassicalGuide You are the best and I mean it!!
Please, please --- time to speak up on the "classical side" of Mitch Miller that has been neglected on CD. If you look hard enough, one might find the Stokowski Swan of Tuonela or Largo from Dvorak's New World (RCA), but no Vaughan-Williams Oboe Concerto (Mercury) or Stravinsky Pastorale (with Szigeti on Columbia). Sony (beneficiary of both U.S. Columbia and RCA catalogs) could easily do a one or two CD compilation, but probably won't.
Fat chance of that. He also gave the American premiere of the Srauss Oboe Concerto. He was a remarkable musical personality, for sure.
You ABSOLUTELY have to have a monologue on these New year concerts but not before you get a good look at the London PROMS...it's the same kind of yuck...
I thought the New years day concert without the audience was of very high standard under Muti. Maybe players were denied the booze beforehand. Once a year feast is enough of this music. Otherwise it's like binging on chocolate eclairs
I have Reiner, Fiedler, and that's enough...
David, where were you when I bought the Vienna Philharmonic’s live New Year’s Concert box set on Sony a few years ago!? Hours and hours of polite, snooty clapping after every piece... ugh.
I can't sit through one of those New Year's Concerts. I started streaming one that is on PBS around the beginning of the year and made it through about 3 pieces before I'd had enough.
Phew. This is all you really need. I recall there was a complete box set of Strauss Viennese music many years ago. Who on earth would sit through that, completely insane.
You're certainly right: nobody should sit through a complete Strauß music box set! In my opinion, (although I admit that as an Austrian and as a Strauß jr fan since my early childhood, I am biased), "sitting through it" is not really the point of this type of music. Yes, Strauß jr departed from tradition by starting to write waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, etc. not purely as dance music but also as concert pieces, but even so, this type of Viennese music is not made for sitting down with the entire Strauß II box set and listening to it all, it's meant to be danced to - and since there is still quite a prominent ball culture in Austria, that actually does still happen.
2:47 I like Strauss waltzes, but I hate the Vienna New Year's concerts, almost with a passion. I want one of these avant-garde anti-bourgeois conductors that, after everything (which means after Blue Danube and Radetzky March), to lock the audience in, and conduct Ravel's La Valse! Only after that to let the audience go.