150 years of the world’s most glorious music, written for one of Europe’s most beautiful cities, is contained in this volume. Play the music, and let yourself be taken back to Vienna – city of dreams.
Take a trip back in time to old Vienna – city of courtly intrigue, secret assignations, masked balls at the Schonbrunn Palace, elegant carriages in the Prater – a classic, orderly world conjured up by the music of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. The 18th century gives way to the Romantic 19th in the lyrical strains of Brahms, and the swirling, abandoned waltzes of Johann Strauss the younger – an epoch when the city itself was transformed into one endless, glittering ballroom. Finally, explore the introspective, Fin de Siecle world of Gustav Mahler, whose passionate but anguished lyricism heralded the downfall of the Hapsburg dynasty and the end of Vienna’s heyday as Europe’s most opulent capital.
