Vienna, even today, is the most musical of cities. Nowhere else on earth will taxi drivers discuss Mozart and Beethoven, or will a change of cast in an opera be treated as front page news. It was always like that. Never has any city attracted more musicians, or left a more lasting imprint on their work. The period from the middle of the eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth, in particular, witnessed an unprecedented wealth of musical genius and with it the formation of a classical style that dominated all Western music of that era. This album pays tribute to that ‘Golden Age Of Vienna.’ Of all the Viennese immortals, none was linked more closely to the Imperial City than Franz Schubert. He was born in Vienna in 1797, the twelfth child of an impoverished schoolmaster and amateur cellist. It was there that he received his musical education and composed most of his music. Vienna produced his few stage works and provided the setting for his brief Bohemian escapades and unbelievable frustrations. Finally, it was there that his life met its untimely end on November 19, 1828. Side A of this disc is entirely devoted to Schubert. It begins with the jovial three-quarter time Reigen, characteristic of the dance music of that period. The poignant Adagio movement of ‘String Quartet, Op. 125’ (composed at the age of twenty) follows an instrumental transcription of the lilting song On The Water. The side concludes with a medley of immortal Schubert melodies, among them the dramatic song Der Erlkönig, the romantic Serenade, and the March Miitaire. Side B also features one Schubert song, the melancholy Der Lindenbaum. It is surrounded by contrasting impressions of a merry Vienna: The dances of Haydn, which foreshadow the coming of the romantic waltz, and the rhythmic buoyancy and elegant charm of two Mozart excerpts. Appropriately, the concluding selection offers a waltz medley dominated by the music of the immortal ‘Waltz King,’ Johann Strauss (1825-1899). In the twentieth century the lustre of Vienna’s musical life shone less brightly. But the city which guards the earthly remains and spiritual heritage of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Strauss, of Beethoven, Brahms, Wolf and Mahler is not likely ever to lose its musical consciousness and significance.