The forerunner of the Bottle Dance was written for the Blue Danube Harmonica Band in the early 1960s. Later, at the instigation of the excellent folk dance choreographer Miklós Manninger, an arrangement for wind band was prepared, in order to widen the ensemble’s repertoire of German national pieces by the addition of a Hungarian dance. The production scored a resounding success not only with the audience but also with the musicians who performed in it, with the result that before long the composer prepared from the Bottle Dance an independent work for wind ensemble - a showy piece, virtuosic in its effect yet easily playable. The youth orchestra arrangement is a simplified and shortened version of the work for full-scale orchestra.