If anyone has a favorite album that they would like to talk about please feel free. Email me and I will post it. I've got several that I love.

Edelweiss

Sometimes there is a perfect pairing between a composer and a performer and that is the case with Strauss (Johann and Joseph) and the Vienna Boy’s Choir. Maybe it is because they are all sons of Austria and share some special Alpine magic.

The WSK CD titled Edelweiss is both beautiful and fun with Strauss waltzes and polkas. Everyone knows the Blue Danube waltz; it turns out that I knew most of the other songs also but I didn’t know what they were called. I’ve heard a lot of them on television or in films so it’s good to learn their names. The waltzes are great but I love the polkas, too. I don’t believe that anyone can listen to the Pizzicato-Polka with tapping their foot.

Along with the Strauss’s there is also a little Mozart, a couple of other songs plus two songs from the film The Sound of Music: Do-Re-Mi and the title song Edelweiss. This is one of my favorite CD’s

There is a companion CD to this one, Ave Maria, that is more serious. Interestingly, it has songs by Mozart, Haydn, Schubert and Bruckner, the four composers that WSK’s four touring choirs are named after.
There are two versions of Ave Maria, the Schubert and the one by Bruckner, on this CD. I like the Schubert one best. The soloist is great. It’s too bad they don’t tell who it is singing.

There is also a really sweet song from the opera Hansel and Gretel titled Abendsenen. This one is in German but Libera does a version of it (Prayer) in English.

One of my absolute favorite songs is Pueri Concinite and the soloist on this one amazes me when he hits those really high notes.

Anyway, these are sold together and I recommend them both.