Karajan Conducts Music from Johann Strauss: On the Beautiful Blue Danube, Emperor Waltz, Overture from Die Fledermaus...

Herbert von Karajan’s name is inseparable from the Deutsche Grammophon label. Yet he reached an international audience through recordings released in the late 1940s and beyond by Columbia, and returned to its successor, EMI Records (now Warner Classics), in the 1970s to make a series of landmark albums. This delightful collection of waltzes and other works by the younger Johann Strauss, long unavailable for streaming, was made in Berlin for EMI in 1975. Karajan and his mighty Berliner Philharmoniker highlight the serious musical craft as well as the joy in the album’s opener, the Overture to Strauss’ smash-hit operetta Die Fledermaus. Listen to the echt-Viennese bounce that Karajan and company bring to the “Blue Danube” and “Emperor” waltzes, and take a whirl round the dancefloor with their dashing Tritsch-Tratsch Polka. The album ends with an enchanting recording from 1960 of the Overture to Otto Nicolai’s opera The Merry Wives of Windsor, a staple of Karajan’s repertoire since his apprentice years in the early 1930s.