In a career that spanned a period from the 1820s until his death in 1849, the older Johann Strauss established an unrivalled position for himself among composers and performers of dance music in Vienna. His own achievements were continued by his three sons, ensuring the name of Strauss was inextricably identified with the musical pleasures of nineteenth-century Vienna. The works featured on this recording date from the 1830s, when Strauss was pre-eminent in the ballrooms of Biedermeier Vienna. They include the Paris-Polka, which here receives its first recording, melodies from Auber’s opera Le bal masqué, and Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable, plus some of Strauss’s most important waltzes from the era, the Elisabethen-Walzer and Der Frohsinn, mein Ziel (Gaiety My Aim) Waltz, a work whose title seems to epitomise the spirit of the composer.