RIAS SO Berlin/Ferenc FricsayAudite 95.629 ****

The career of the Hungarian conductor Ferenc Fricsay (1914-63) was launched when he replaced Otto Klemperer in the première of Gottfried von Einem’s Dantons Tod at the 1947 Salzburg Festival. Fricsay was soon in charge of the RIAS-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, making recordings with both it and the Berlin Philharmonic. He had a reputation as a martinet. But, in spite of, or because of that, he had a real gift for lighter music. His conducting of the music of the Strauss family had real fibre, was carried out with a twinkle in the eye, and was full of felicitous touches to delight the most fastidious of tastes. The rewarding selection offered here includes some of the most popular waltzes and polkas, and the technical quality of the studio recordings, made for broadcasting use, still bears up well.

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