My orchestration from the Litolff piano score of this waltz by Emil Waldteufel. I’ve tried to like this waltz but it doesn’t do it for me. It’s just not Viennese. There just isn’t enough swing and rhythmic vitality for a waltz of this period.

Too many of the themes are square, with the stresses on the bar, rather than with cross rhythms to move the piece along. There are too many “one note per bar” melodies (I make it four out of ten) which sap the energy too. They do appear in Strauss waltzes, but it’s rare to find more than one per work. There are some nice tunes though.

He made a good living out of this kind of waltz, but I’m off back to Vienna!