Zapfenstreich

How to explain the extensive popularity of German folksinger Heino to someone unfamiliar with that country's culture? Imagine hoards of adoring fans, from children to grandparents, going gaga over Elvis. Then in Elvis' place, substitute another artist who goes by a single moniker, a blond-haired senior citizen clad in vinyl rectangular glasses. His voice is deep, the deepest baritone imaginable, which he uses to belt out his hit polkas and marches.

How to explain the extensive popularity of German folksinger Heino to someone unfamiliar with that country's culture? Imagine hoards of adoring fans, from children to grandparents, going gaga over Elvis. Then in Elvis' place, substitute another artist who goes by a single moniker, a blond-haired senior citizen clad in vinyl rectangular glasses. His voice is deep, the deepest baritone imaginable, which he uses to belt out his hit polkas and marches.

How to explain the extensive popularity of German folksinger Heino to someone unfamiliar with that country's culture? Imagine hoards of adoring fans, from children to grandparents, going gaga over Elvis. Then in Elvis' place, substitute another artist who goes by a single moniker, a blond-haired senior citizen clad in vinyl rectangular glasses. His voice is deep, the deepest baritone imaginable, which he uses to belt out his hit polkas and marches.

Joseph Lanner and Johann Strauss I (1804-1849), who played the violin in Lanner's quintet and orchestra until 1825, adopted the traditional German country dances and fashioned them into then waltz, the Viennese dance par excellence. They also took up the galoppade, a dance favoured by previous generations, and from 1835 began to widen the scope of their compositions by including the Parisian quadrille and the Bohemian polka. By 1830 the fashionable dance floors of the western world were dominated by Viennese popular rhythms and melodies, first and foremost amongst them the Viennese waltz. The sons of Johann Strauss I extended the tradition established by Lanner and their father by bringing the waltz into the orbit of symphonic music. As the years went by, the triumphs of the Strauss dynasty increasingly obscured Lanner's achievement - unfairly, as this CD shows.