For his latest album release Paul Badura-Skoda draws from the abundant pool of dances and waltzes by Franz Schubert. The course of the Schubertiades - small, unannounced concerts in the circle of Schuberts Friends - often involved cheerful dancing for which Schubert, who improvised at the piano, provided the music. He played his finest musical thoughts repeatedly so as to remember them and write them down later on. Accordingly, there is an incredible wealth of melodic and harmonious invention behind the apparently ever so simple waltzes and dances by Schubert, paired with a rich range of emotional contents: from radiant joy to the deepest sorrow and melancholy. The polka adaptions of Otto Schulhof using motifs by Johann Strauß II are likewise not composed for the public stage but primarily for smaller circles.

Liner notes by the artist.