SOMM Recordings celebrates the wealth of popular concert music produced in Vienna in the 19th and early 20th centuries with a release called Dancing in Vienna, an exhilarating collection of waltzes to set your feet tapping. The Philharmonic Concert Orchestra is led by the versatile Scottish conductor, Iain Sutherland, whose previous, wide-ranging collaborations with SOMM have received enthusiastic critical response: “strong and trenchant, often exhilarating, never sentimental” (Gramophone); “getting pretty much everything right, every nuance and subtle rhythm” (Amazon USA).

Einzi Stolz, widow of one of the last masters of Viennese light music, Robert Stolz, wrote to Sutherland, “You have a Viennese heart with the golden arm for Viennese music.” Robert Stolz’s rousing march, Greetings from Vienna, opens this collection, which also includes his Viennese Cafe Waltzes.

Dominating the light music programmes of Vienna for almost a century was the Strauss family – Johann I and his three sons Johann II, Josef, and Eduard. They composed dances and conducted their own orchestras for all the grand balls and concerts almost every day of the week in Vienna, as well as all over the world.

Among the works by Johann Strauss II included here is his famous Emperor Waltz, commissioned in 1889 for a state visit by Emperor Franz-Joseph I of Austria-Hungary to Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. Reflecting the rise of popular Hungarian gypsy music at the time is his Salute the Magyars polka, along with the Tritsch-Tratsch, Thunder and Lightning, and Champagne polkas, and the overture to his operetta masterpiece, Die Fledermaus.

Johann II was the most famous of the family of musicians, though he once said of his younger brother, Josef Strauss, that he was “the more gifted of us two; I am merely the more popular...” From Josef Strauss we have the Chatterbox Polka, Dragonfly Polka-Mazurka, Jockey Polka (incorporating the international trumpet call marking the opening of the racing season), the Feuerfest! Polka to celebrate the Wertheim company’s 200,000th fireproof safe, and the beloved Pizzicato Polka, on which he collaborated with his popular brother.

The youngest of the Strauss brothers, Eduard Strauss, was better recognised as a dance music conductor than as a composer. Still, this release includes his Clear Track Polka, heralding the opening of a new railway company in 1869.

Johannes Brahms greatly admired the melodic genius of Johann Strauss II. Their respect was mutual, and Strauss often included his good friend’s Hungarian Dances on his programmes. This present collection includes nos. 1, 5, and 6 from Brahms’s collection of 21 dances.

The lesser-known composer, author, and musical administrator Richard Heuberger is represented on this CD of Dancing in Vienna by the overture to his light opera, The Opera Ball.