The self-interested cabal that has controlled the legacy of the Second Viennese School has barely conceded that this music exists, but the fact is that, faced with mounting bills at his Society for Musical Private Performances during the ruinous inflation of the early '20s, Arnold Schoenberg organized a concert of arrangements of music by Johann Strauss (the younger) and opened it to the public in order to raise money, defensively pointing out that Brahms, too, liked Strauss waltzes. His proteges, Berg and Webern, were ...
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The self-interested cabal that has controlled the legacy of the Second Viennese School has barely conceded that this music exists, but the fact is that, faced with mounting bills at his Society for Musical Private Performances during the ruinous inflation of the early '20s, Arnold Schoenberg organized a concert of arrangements of music by Johann Strauss (the younger) and opened it to the public in order to raise money, defensively pointing out that Brahms, too, liked Strauss waltzes. His proteges, Berg and Webern, were drafted to arrange one waltz each, with Berg snaring the familiar Wein, Weib, und Gesang, Op. 418 (Wine, Women, and Song), and Schoenberg contributed a pair. The autograph scores, all for the combination of string quartet, piano, and harmonium, were auctioned off at the end of the evening. Those four works open the program here, with a later arrangement of the Kaiser-walzer, Op. 437, by Schoenberg and several contemporary works in the same vein filling out the album; the later three...
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