Founded in 1956, the Philharmonia Hungarica emerged from turbulent post-war times as a crack ensemble of émigré Hungarian musicians who had fled Communism for the West. While they gave concerts in Europe and the US, it was through these seven albums on Mercury and Philips that they became famous, and synonymous with the name of the conductor Antal Doráti.

Soprano Diana Damrau, dazzling in the operas of Mozart, Donizetti, Verdi and Richard Strauss, also has operetta in her blood. With this album she tours three capital cities of operetta – Vienna, Berlin and Paris – and covers nearly seven decades of musical history. En route she relishes the romance, wit and melodies of numbers by such composers Johann Strauss II, Franz Lehár, Emmerich Kálmán, Robert Stolz, Paul Abraham, André Messager, Henri Christiné, Oscar Straus and Francis Lopez. Her star guest is tenor Jonas Kaufmann and conducting the Münchner Rundfunkorchester is Ernst Theis, as expert in operetta as he is in symphonic repertoire.

The Summer Night Concert will be performed this year on June 7. It is an annual open-air event, which has been held since 2004 in the magical setting of Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna/Austria. The illustrious conductors who have previously led the orchestra at this event are Georges Prêtre, Daniel Barenboim, Franz Welser-Möst, Lorin Maazel, Christoph Eschenbach, Zubin Mehta, Semyon Bychkov, Gustavo Dudamel, Daniel Harding, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Andris Nelsons.

Esteemed tenor, Jonas Kaufmann, returns with his sensational new album "WIEN". This must-have album showcases the crowd-pleasing evergreens that turned Vienna into a beloved capital of classical music. "WIEN" features a stunning collection of operetta hits and Viennese songs composed between 1870 and 1950 - Kaufmann teams up with the world renowned Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Adam Fisher. Vienna’s heyday for operetta produced stage-hits such as Johann Strauß’s ‘Komm in die Gondel’ (from Eine Nacht in Venedig / A Night in Venice) the ‘Clock Duet’ from Die Fledermaus and the ‘Title duet’ from Wiener Blut, as well as Franz Léhar’s ‘Lippen Schweigen’ from The Merry Widow.

Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna is once again this year the beautiful backdrop for a classical music concert in a class of its own. Every year, the famous summer night concert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra takes place there. This year, the orchestra is conducted by Valery Gergiev, who has been working with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra for many years. For the first time this year, the German world star Jonas Kaufmann will be the star guest at the Summer Night Concert. The programme is still secret, but as every year it will be a particularly beautiful mixture of classical hits and special works by Richard Strauss, Richard Wagner, Jacques Offenbach, Jules Massenet, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Emmerich Kálmán, Maurice Jarre, Aram Khachaturian and Giacomo Puccini.