A violinist-conductor who understood orchestras from the inside out: commanding power and Viennese warmth in the complete Decca symphonic recordings of Walter Weller. As the youngest ever leader of the Vienna Philharmonic, Walter Weller quickly established a natural rapport with orchestras at home and abroad when he swapped bow for baton in the late 1960s. […]

Light opera and musical theatre rub shoulders in this delightful compendium of favourites from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. With a few exceptions, such as Lehár’s ‘Merry Widow’, many of the operettas from which these songs and arias are taken are largely forgotten and seldom performed but their ‘hits’ remain evergreen. This reissue includes the […]

Several countries have their light operas: the British their Gilbert and Sullivan, the Spanish their zarzuelas, the French their operettes. All of these display quite tight-knit styles but the operetta tradition of Austria and specifically Vienna, is more diffuse, reflecting the differing styles of folk music found in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. The world of […]