MEMORIES OF VIENNA - JOSEF KRIPS, VIENNA PHILHARMONIC

Strauss waltzes and polkas in classic Decca 1950s recordings, led to the manner born by the Viennese conductor Josef Krips.Newly remastered from the original tapes – and in the case of two works the shellac discs – this compilation presents recordings made in London and Vienna by a conductor born and bred to the rhythms of the Strauss family. Josef Krips cut his teeth as a repetiteur at the Volksoper in Vienna, making his debut there in 1921, before graduating to the more prestigious Staatsoper in 1933.Mozart was forever Krips’s musical god: ‘My maxim is that everything has to sound as though it were by Mozart, or it will be a bad performance. When you perform Mozart, everything has to be crystal clear, everything has to be in balance and everything has to have a relaxed sound.’ These are the qualities that mark out his conducting of these waltzes and polkas, which he continued to conduct wherever his career took him: to London in the late 1940s, becoming principal conductor of the LS