Sofia Waltzer Orchestra

Viennese ball culture reached Sofia in the form of an annual Wiener Ball, and this orchestra exists to supply it: waltzes, polkas and quadrilles played for dancing rather than for an audience seated in rows. The repertoire is the Strauss family's and its neighbours'; the discipline is that of a dance band with symphonic manners, tempo governed by the floor rather than by the baton. Two decades of such balls have made the evening a fixture of the Sofia winter, and the orchestra with it.