Vienna, even today, is the most musical of cities. Nowhere else on earth will taxi drivers discuss Mozart and Beethoven, or will a change of cast in an opera be treated as front page news. It was always like that. Never has any city attracted more musicians, or left a more lasting imprint on their work. The period from the middle of the eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth, in particular, witnessed an unprecedented wealth of musical genius and with it the formation of a classical style that dominated all Western music of that era. This album pays tribute to that ‘Golden Age Of Vienna.’ Of all the Viennese immortals, none was linked more closely to the Imperial City than Franz Schubert. He was born in Vienna in 1797, the twelfth child of an impoverished schoolmaster and amateur cellist. It was there that he received his musical education and composed most of his music. Vienna produced his few stage works and provided the setting for his brief Bohemian escapades and unbelievable frustrations. Finally