My orchestration of this waltz by Robert Vollstedt.

It was once a very big hit. Indeed, looking for pre First World War recordings I found more of this piece than of the Blue Danube. I expect it was the whimsical coda that was the main attraction but it is a very good waltz anyway. With the limited space available on cylinders and 78rpm discs, some of the recordings are just of the coda.

The early recordings are very interesting not least because of the tempi. They are almost all faster than the waltz is generally played today and some of them are very much faster. This would seem to be common among early recordings: the waltz just seems to get slower and more nostalgic and sentimental as the 20th century progresses (because it stopped being a dance that young people would dance for fun?). There isn’t much rubato either. Vollstedt marks some ralls and the odd pause but most performances don’t add any more. They do have quite marked tempo changes between sections though. It certainly isn’t a sentimental waltz: the most common expression marking is “con fuoco”.

I have tried to recapture the spirit of these early recordings without taking the tempi quite so fast.

Definitely good fun though.