Austrian Folk

Edelweiss were an Austrian electronic dance music group consisting of remixers Martin Gletschermayer, Matthias Schweger and Walter Werzowa. The group is best known for their 1988 worldwide hit "Bring Me Edelweiss", and their European hit "Starship Edelweiss". Edelweiss reached the number one position with their hit "Bring Me Edelweiss," featuring Austrian folk singer Maria Mathis, who also did the live performances (and later recorded an updated version in 1999). The single was a hit in many European countries, supposedly by following the instructions given in The KLF's book The Manual. Borrowing large parts of its melody from ABBA's "SOS" and Indeep's "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life", the song humorously targeted Austrian ski resorts and yodeling and sold five million copies worldwide.

The world music band Hotel Palindrone reliably prove with every album how irrelevant any kind of frontier is, and how much fun you can have if you go beyond limits…

Since 1995 Hotel Palindrone have surprised audience and critics all over the world. The four musicians are virtuosos on countless instruments. Their virtuosity lightheartedly connects various European folk traditions with jazz and classical music. Passionate improvisations encounter catchy dance rhythms. All are having fun – on stage and in the audience…

In 1819 the Viennese music publisher and composer Anton Diabelli sent a short waltz to a long list of composers. These included Schubert, Hummel, a very young Franz Liszt and, as the most prominent composer of the time, naturally Beethoven. Diabelli was proposing to compile an anthology of variations on his own waltz, one from each composer. Beethoven responded in a characteristic manner: first there was nothing, and then there was nothing … and then, in 1823, there was an entire, and monumental, set of no less than thirty-three variations.

One of the continuing appeals of Hans Werner Henze's music is his ability to use the formidable arsenal of twentieth century musical innovations in works that have immediate aural appeal, while probing ambiguous or disturbing layers of meaning lurking beneath the surface. The complexity of his music is generally not so much apparent on its surface as in its psychology. While Henze has written in virtually every genre of music in his long and remarkably productive career, he is essentially a dramatic composer, and it's for his operas, ballets, music theater pieces, vocal music, and film music that he will be most remembered.

In Miss Meteores, Olivia Ruiz's third album, the young French songwriter seems more in control than ever of her artistic persona, and clearly cherishing every bit of her liberation from the shadow of her STAR ACADEMY fame. For starters, she wrote all the lyrics for her new album, as well as co-writing most of the music with longtime partner Mathias Malzieu. Ruiz enthusiastically tries her hand at everything in Miss Meteores, verging from French chanson to hard rock, or from blues to calypso and folk, as well as singing in three languages and featuring several guests from all across the board: Austrian folk outfit Lonely Drifter Karen, rapper Toan, French rock group Coming Soon, Christian Olivier from Têtes Raides, the Noisettes, and even members of her own family.

Ernst Krenek (1900-1991) was a prolific, stylistic chameleon of a composer, who made 'good enemies' on all sides and remains hard to evaluate. This is a valuable collection of three concertos involving the violin, played with impressive assurance by Peter Rosenberg, who is joined by his brother Gabriel (they were a prize-winning duo) in the Double Concerto Op 124 of 1950, perhaps the most attractively accessible of the three. The compact first concerto Op 29 (1924)…….

Peter Grahame Woolf @ musicweb-international.com