Contemporaries of the Strauss Family, Volume 2

Classic FM Album of the Week, 6 July 2015.

Much of the music of the Strauss family has been recorded and is well known, but there were many other talented composers who produced a large amount of light music in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

This collection offers a small fraction of some of the other popular music of the day. Extensive research by The Johann Strauss Society of Great Britain and conductor John Georgiadis has resulted in the reconstruction of some works from original archive material and, in a few cases, new orchestrations.

Worth discovering among the unjustly neglected composers featured here are: Iosef Ivanovici, an expert creator of marches; Julius Fučik, the most famous Czech composer of popular light music, whose humorous march Um Mitternacht includes an imitation of nocturnal cats by the trombones; and Juventino Rosas, a talented Mexican composer.

It’s all played with huge enthusiasm and gusto by the Czech Chamber Philharmonic under John Georgiadis, who is to be commended for uncovering so many lost classics.