My realisation of this waltz by Joseph Lanner. It was dedicated to the British Queen Victoria and first performed at Dommayer’s on the 9th February 1839. Victoria had been crowned the previous summer.

This is based on an incomplete set of manuscript parts from the Wien Bibliothek. My visits to Vienna are relatively infrequent and short and I had to choose between looking at a set of published parts and this manuscript. I made the wrong choice. However, the instruments that are missing are relatively easy to fill in, so I’ve done that pending getting hold of the real 2nd trumpet part, for example. There are lots of errors in the parts too, mainly phrasing and dynamics that are inconsistent between the instruments.

Regardless of that I seem to have ended up with something that sounds like Lanner and, as I hadn’t heard the piece before, thought it was worth issuing. It did give me the opportunity to play one of my favourite games: write out the violin parts, work out what I would have done with the rest of the instruments and then compare it to the original. I’m getting better at it but there are still gaps between what a self taught, ex computer programmer can do and what a professional musician and a genius at that could do. Never mind. I’m sure his C++ was terrible.