Wien, du Stadt meiner Träume (Vienna, my city of dreams)

By the turn of the nineteenth century the Viennese waltz idiom was so firmly established, the tricks of the trade so familiar, that apparently any competent musician could produce a decent example. Rudolf Sieczynski, a writer and a comparatively humble composer whose music scarcely penetrated to the high-society ballrooms of his day, is known in the concert hall only for his Op.1. Wien, du Stadt meiner Träume (“Vienna, my city of dreams”), for which he wrote both the words and the music, is a waltz song of such tender charm that no singer interested in the popular Viennese repertoire can resist it. Its most recent claims to fame include its disproportionately heroic role in the Three Tenors’ concert at Caracalla in Rome in 1990 (and on the subsequent CD) and its scarcely recognisable walk-on part in a toyshop scene in Stanley Kubrick’s last film “Eyes Wide Shut.”