In the course of the nineteenth century Vienna won fame for its dance music and, above all, for the waltz, without question the most popular dance of the period. The waltz craze owed a great deal to Joseph Lanner and the elder Johann Strauss, and then to the latter’s eldest son, the younger Johann Strauss, who provided dance music for the Imperial court and for much of Europe. Together these three musicians established what we now consider to be ‘the Viennese tradition’ of dance music. This release presents music by all three of these masters of the original Viennese waltz, in performances featuring the instrumentation through which these works would have been heard in countless coffee houses, restaurants and wine and beer halls throughout Austria. In addition to the waltzes, there are vigorous polkas and galops, the more stately polonaise and polka mazurka, and arrangements of dances from the Austrian province of Styria, all designed for enjoyable listening or a quick spin around the dance floor.