My orchestration of the piano score of this march by Johann Strauss II based on tunes from his operetta Jabuka. The march was written for piano but never he orchestrated it which made it fair game for me.

There are at least three other recordings of arrangements of this. As is my normal practice, I didn’t listen to them before writing mine to avoid being influenced by them. Normally that works out well in that when I do listen to them I have done something interesting enough in comparison to make it worthwhile. Unfortunately not in this case. The Naxos complete edition recording and the two recent-ish VPO New Year’s Day Concert recordings are all good and with good arrangements in a passable Strauss style – they may all be the same arrangement.

A day wasted then!