The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Other Orchestral Favourites

Carl Maria von Weber, the honorific 'von' acquired in doubtful circumstances by his unreliable father, was a cousin of Constanze Weber, the girl Mozart married in a match of which his father greatly disapproved. It had seemed that Weber himself might be a second Mozart, showing obvious musical abilities as a child, when he travelled with his father's theatrical company, and embarking on an ambitious career as a conductor, when he was appointed Kapellmeister at Breslau at the age of eighteen. After various vicissitudes, he was able to establish himself as a virtuoso pianist, an innovative conductor and a composer of stature, before his early death in London in 1826. The rondo-brillant known in English as Invitation to the Dance was written for the piano in 1819 and dedicated to his wife Caroline. The work is a miniature drama in which a gentleman approaches a lady, asking for her hand in th