Customer Reviews

Johann Strauss, Father & Son: A Century of Light Music (Select Bibliographies Reprint Ser.))

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Reprinted by a British firm that specializes in such things, this is a well-written, well-researched book on the Strauss family and other contemporary musician-conductors. Without being pedantic, it provides pertinent [sometimes little-known] facts in a reader-friendly fashion. I hadn't known until recently, for example, that performances of the Waltz King's waltzes and polkas are based on orchestral arrangements of 1- or 2-piano reductions--all the original orchestrations having been lost for years. The only clue that one is reading a high-quality photocopy-based reprint are the very rare check marks and other marginalia that someone forgot to expunge before the copying was done. Well worth the price.