Vienna\

From Beethoven, Mozart and Chopin to Mahler and Bartok, European classical music has been a source of inspiration to numerous jazz musicians. The 19th Century compositions of the Strauss family are the subject of All That Strauss, which documents a New Year's 2000 concert by the Vienna Art Orchestra–one of Europe's most adventurous big bands. It is quite appropriate that this Strauss tribute concert was performed in Vienna and that the orchestra has Vienna in its name; for many classical greats have lived in Austria's largest city, including Johann and Eduard Strauss. While the Vienna Art Orchestra's love of the Strauss legacy is obvious, the band doesn't treat its compositions like museum pieces. Instead, time-honored compositions like "Donauwalzer," "Albion Polka," "Ein Morgen, ein Mittag, ein Abend in Wien" and "Lagunen Walzer" are given serious jazz makeovers, and arranger Mathias Rüegg sees to it that the orchestra takes a lot of chances with the material.

inexplicably, both these Quintets by Bruckner and Schmidt are rarely performed and recorded. One demands to know why these magnificent works are not part of the standard repertoire. Here the scores are given performances of the strongest advocacy by the Vienna Philharmonia Quintet. The recordings were made for Decca over thirty years ago and they remain among the finest examples of late-Romantic chamber music on record.

Mathias Rüegg's Vienna Art Orchestra had always been an eclectic bunch, working in the odd jazz or classical cover into its repertoire with some regularity, but for this release, the ensemble went whole hog, leaping into the oeuvre of that grandfather of minimalism, Erik Satie. Originally issued as a two-LP set, every track (save one evocative Gil Evans-y piece by Rüegg) is a Satie composition rearranged, often brilliantly, and generally highlighting two or three individual VAO members. This reductionist technique serves the band well, as it has often had a tendency toward weighty ponderousness. Here, the arrangements are light and linear, affording a supple but transparent platform for the soloists, who are clearly encouraged to venture out into jazzy territory.

Recorded live at the Zurich Jazz Festival in 1980, this was America's first taste of the wild abandon that is the Vienna Art Orchestra and expatriate Lauren Newton's glorious vocal instrument. This is a 13-piece big band led by the beautifully weird compositional, instructional, and arranging craziness of Mathias Rüegg. They trash and revere all traditions – both historical and avant-garde at the same time – while using them both along with carnival and circus music, classical forms and fugues, and French salon music. They swing here like a Mingus big band playing "Jelly Roll, But Mingus Rolls Better," with soloists who could care less what the ensemble chart says and vice versa. Newton, mixed high above the prattle, soars with the intensity of a pianist while blowing Jon Hendricks away at his own game. The fun really begins when the ensemble changes tempos two or three times and sections play against each other as in "Concerto Piccolo," even if begun by the lilting line of the title's instrument.

Many Paganini scholars consider the quartets with guitar to be among his finest chamber works. The care Paganini took in their composition is documented in numerous letters asking the opinion of his friend Luigi Germi, to whom Quartet No. 10 is dedicated. The Quartets, Op. 4 and Op. 5 with their almost playful eccentricities and freedoms show the composer trying out a variety of forms and variations on convention, all with his typically virtuoso and lyrical touch. Volume 2 of this edition (CDS7938) was admired for its ‘crisp and elegant sensibility’ in BBC Music Magazine.

The Summer Night Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic is the world's biggest annual classical open-air concert and will take place in the magical setting of the Schönbrunn Palace Baroque park in Vienna on June 18, 2021. The theme for this year is Fernweh and includes musical favorites from Bernstein, Verdi, Rachmaninov, Sibelius, Elgar, Debussy and Holst. It will also include many fantastic Summer Night Concert debuts: SNC debut by pianist Igor Levit & British conductor Daniel Harding.

Postcards from Vienna: drawn largely from the supreme players of the Wiener Philharmoniker, collected here are the Decca recordings of Viennese chamber music ensembles, including the New Vienna Octet, Vienna Wind Soloists, Wiener Waldhornverein and Vienna Flute Trio, many making their first international appearance on CD. Led by clarinetist Alfred Boskovsky, the first line-up of the Vienna Octet made it's last recording for Decca in 1972, but Boskovsky was behind the revival of the group's name, having already chosen the young members of the Vienna Philharmonic who would carry on the work of the ensemble and it's traditions of superbly mellifluous, silver-toned playing.

Celebrating his half-century as a Decca artist, as well as his eighty-fifth birthday, Sir Georg Solti here offers a nicely autobiographical collection of three sets of variations: the Peacock Variations of Kodaly representing his Hungarian roots, the lively Paganini Variations of Blacher a recognition of his years as German citizen, and finally a tribute to his unique Britishness in Elgar's Enigma Variations. The disc is also a tribute to the Vienna Philharmonic and Solti's special relationship with that orchestra, with whom he recorded these live performances in the Musikverein last April. You have only to compare this warmly expressive, subtly nuanced, and deeply felt account of the Elgar with Solti's earlier Chicago version of 1974 to appreciate not only the quality of this great Viennese orchestra, but the way in which Solti has mellowed over the last two decades.