CBSO Viennese 2005

The Relief of Vienna (or Vienna under Siege?)

In the middle of the nineteenth century Vienna was the undisputed capital of the waltz. No other city could even begin to threaten its supremacy. As Johann I, the founder of the Strauss dynasty, had developed it and as his eldest son Johann II had by about 1860 perfected it, the Viennese waltz had its own sophisticated form and a distinctive style which, far from taxing a composer’s melodic resources, seemed both to multiply and refine them. Certainly, Johann II and his youngest brother Joseph rarely failed to come up with at least one captivating tune for each of their hundreds of waltzes. Given a similarly inexhaustible supply of good ideas for the polka - which is where the middle Strauss brother, Eduard, was particularly imaginative - the Austrian capital was unrivalled in the production of high-quality ballroom-dance music.

Outside the ballroom, however, in the musical theatre, Vienna was under threat. From the mid-1850s Offenbach operettas had been imported from Paris, often in pirated versions, and had become so popular that within a few years Offenbach himself was presenting his latest works in Vienna as soon as they had been seen in Paris. His success, like his income, was enormous. In 1865, for example, La belle Hélène was given no fewer than 65 performances at the Theater an der Wien - an iconic centre of Austrian culture where operas as distinguished as Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Beethoven’s Fidelio had first seen the light of day. “Here the war cry is Offenbach for ever!” the composer reported from Vienna. And it wasn’t only Offenbach: composers like Adam, Boieldieu and Lecocq were cashing in too.

It was a situation which no self-respecting Viennese composer with a living to make could tolerate but, in spite of the often inspired efforts of Franz von Suppé at the Carltheater and the Theater an der Wien, none of them could turn back the tide from Paris. It wasn’t until Johann Strauss II resigned his post as Director of Music to the Imperial Court Balls to devote himself to the musical theatre that Vienna had a hope of repelling the French invasion. It took several years to do it but, once Strauss had demonstrated the superiority of his art with his third operetta, Die Fledermaus, at the Theater an der Wien in 1874, Viennese music was on the way to winning the same kind of supremacy in the theatre as it had long enjoyed in the ballroom.

Franz von Suppé (1819-1895)

Overture: Ein Morgen, ein Mittag und ein Abend in Wien (Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna)

When Franz von Suppé started working in the theatre, as an unpaid assistant conductor at the Theater in der Josefstadt in 1840, Viennese operetta as we know it did not exist. It would not exist, in fact, until 1860 when, challenged by the overwhelming popularity of the Offenbach imports from Paris, he wrote Das Pensionat, which is certainly not the best known of its kind but was probably the first. He went on to write dozens more, including Die schöne Galathea in 1865, Fatinitza in 1876 and Bocaccio (”the greatest success of my life”) in 1879. If most of the dozens of operettas he composed for the Theater an der Wien and the Carltheater are now remembered only by their overtures, it is not so much because the operettas are inferior as because the overtures are so very good. Though written in 1844, years before he entered into competition with Offenbach, the overture to a comedy sketch on life in Vienna called Ein Morgen, ein Mittag und ein Abend in Wien - with its slow introduction, its elegantly lyrical cello solo, and its tuneful and increasingly brilliant closing section - is a thoroughly characteristic example.

Franz Lehár (1870-1948)

Gold und Silber (Gold and Silver) Waltz

Like many of the most popular Viennese composers of his day, Franz Lehár came from a military-musical background. Born in Hungary, he had to spend years as a bandmaster before leaving military service and settling in Vienna in 1902. His timing was perfect, however. Taste for the characteristically vertiginous one-in-a-bar waltz cultivated by the Strauss family was waning in favour of something more sensuous and more romantic, something that swayed rather than swirled. Although it contains some glitteringly lively episodes too, the gliding melodic style of the Gold und Silber Waltz - written for a ball with a “gold and silver” theme at the Sofiensaal in the 1902 carnival season - was just what was required. It established Lehár’s reputation immediately. Three years later he wrote Die lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow), which includes an even more sentimental waltz and which was to become the most successful of all Viennese operettas.

Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)

Furioso Polka, Op.260 (edited by Max Schönherr)

One of the least likely of Johann II’s many enterprises was the seasons of summer concerts - ten of them between 1856 and 1865, two more in 1869 and 1886 - which he directed in the Vauxhall Pavilion in Pavlovsk Park near St Petersburg. As the result of a deal with the Tsarskoye-Selo Railway Company, which was eager to publicize its line between St Petersburg and Pavlovsk, the Russian audience had the privilege of being the first to hear such favourite pieces as the Tritsch-Tratsch and Pizzicato Polkas, an unknown composer called Tchaikovsky had his first opportunity to hear his music performed in public, and Johann Strauss made a small fortune in roubles. Written for the Pavlovsk season of 1861, the Furioso Polka has an appropriately Russian-dance flavour to its bustling opening theme. Not that, in the increasingly frenetic galop that follows, any dancer would have the time to notice such stylistic niceties.

Emmerich Kálmán (1882-1953)

from Die Csárdásfürstin (The Gypsy Princess): “Heia! In den Bergen…” (“Heia! In the Mountains…”)

One of the consequences of Johann II’s achievement in establishing a distinctively Viennese form of operetta was that he created an insatiable demand for it - so much so that, paradoxically, the Viennese theatres had to call on foreign composers to provide the material they so urgently needed. The most successful of them, like Lehár and Kálmán, came from Hungary, well equipped as they were to indulge the Viennese taste for Hungarian-gypsy music which, like Johann II in Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron), they combined with the required proportion of waltzes.

Kálmán’s most successful operetta Die Csárdásfürstin (The Gypsy Princess) was first performed at the Johann-Strauss Theatre in Vienna in 1915 - thirty years after Der Zigeunerbaron. The difference in period is immediately obvious in the more lavish orchestration and the difference in style in the more authentic Hungarian-gypsy idiom. The first vocal number is sung by the “csárdás princess” herself, the Budapest cabaret singer Sylvia Varescu, as a farewell to her public before leaving on a tour of America. A true example of the csárdás, it begins slowly and in nostalgic mood, with evocative wind solos, and then races off in a quick dance tempo stimulating a high-energy performance from both voice and orchestra.

Johann Strauss II

from Die Fledermaus: Adele’s Laughing Song (“Mein Herr Marquis”)

One way out of an embarrassing situation is to laugh it off - just as Adele does in Johann Strauss’s comic operetta Die Fledermaus. Adele is a parlour maid who has taken the evening off ostensibly “to visit a sick aunt” but in reality to attend a lavish ball at the villa of Prince Orlofsky, to whom she is introduced as an actress called Olga. As luck would have it, her employer Gabriel von Eisenstein, is at the ball too and recognises her in one of his wife’s best dresses. Her response is to treat the situation as a huge joke - how amusing that such a stylishly turned-out young lady such as she should be mistaken for a parlour maid! - and sings an elegant little number that regularly breaks out in brilliant peals of laughter. She can well afford to laugh because she knows that Eisenstein, who has presented himself at the ball as the Marquis de Renard, shouldn’t be there either.

Franz Lehár

from Die lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow): Hanna’s Viljalied (“Es lebt eine Vilja”)

The most successful of all Lehár’s operettas - the most successful of all Viennese operettas next to Die Fledermaus - was, and still is, Die lustige Witwe (“The Merry Widow”), which was first performed in Vienna in 1905. Set for the most part in the Paris embassy of an imaginary Balkan state, it skilfully exploits both the sophisticated amusements of the great city and the sentiment associated with the backward way of life in Pontevedro. “I’m off to chez Maxim” belongs to the former category. The Vilja Song - introduced by Hanna Glawari, a young and rich and beautiful widow, the loss of whose personal fortune through marriage to a fortune-seeking Frenchman could sink the whole Pontevedran economy - falls in the latter category. It’s a kind of folk song: Vilja, a beautiful wood nymph, allows a huntsman to fall in love with her and then, to his inconsolable despair, disappears . . . .

Johann Strauss II

Annen-Polka (St Anne’s Day Polka), Op.117

Exhilarating ballroom exercise though it was, in comparison with the waltz the polka was neither as sexy for the dancer nor as interesting for the composer. Its high-energy requirement meant that it rarely lasted longer than two or three minutes while its high-speed rhythmic activity gave the composer little opportunity to do more than put a cheerful tune and catchy title to it and dress it up in colourful orchestration. The Strauss family did, however, develop a slower version, the so-called French polka, and a fascinating hybrid, the polka-mazurka, which adapted the duple-time polka step to the triple-time mazurka. One of the most attractive of all French polkas is Johann II’s Annen-Polka, written for the popular Viennese festivities surrounding St Anne’s Day (26th June) and first performed at The Wild Man and Parrot in the Prater in 1852. In comparison with a characteristic example of the quick polka like the breathless and unstoppable Tritsch-Tratsch, it proceeds at a nicely gently pace and with a charmingly flirtatious step - until, that is, it so firmly puts its foot down at the end.

Johann Strauss I

Chineser-Galoppe (Chinese Galops), Op.20

A forerunner and close relation of both the Viennese polka and the French can-can, the galop was perhaps the most energetic of all ballroom dances in the first half of the nineteenth century. Before the polka overtook it in popularity the elder Johann Strauss wrote dozens of them, none more exotic than the Chineser-Galoppe (not even the Cachucha to be heard later in the programme). More middle-eastern than far-eastern to our ears, it’s a delightful little inspiration originally scored for a chamber ensemble of four strings with flute, clarinet and two horns.

Johann Strauss II

Kaiser-Walzer (Emperor Waltz), Op.437

The Emperor Waltz is not only a great piece of music but also a great piece of international diplomacy. It was written to celebrate the historic state visit made by Kaiser Franz Joseph I of Austria to Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany in Berlin in 1889 and was given its grand but neutral title so as to offend neither emperor and to flatter them both. Imperial in inspiration, it is also imperial in stature. The introduction takes the form of a delicately scored march, while the first of the waltz tunes - briefly anticipated in march time before its definitive introduction in waltz time on horn and violins - must be the most dignified of its kind. Although none of the following three waltzes is quite as stately, trumpets and trombones certainly make an imposing entry in the last but one of them. Not satisfied with a recapitulation of almost symphonic proportions, recalling the second and third waltzes as well as the main theme itself, Strauss adds an epilogue featuring a thoughtful solo cello and a brilliantly ceremonial ending.

Johann Strauss II

Overture: Die Fledermaus

By far the most successful of Strauss operettas, and the only one actually set in the Austrian capital, Die Fledermaus was the work that did more than any other to rescue Viennese musical theatre from the French invasion. Not the least entertaining part of it is the Overture which, since it takes no account of the order of events in the plot, requires no previous knowledge of how one of its principal characters acquired the embarrassingly unwelcome nickname of “Die Fledermaus” (The Bat) and how he gets his own back at a lavish and rather dissolute party thrown by the Russian Prince Orlofsky.

It begins with the most dramatic music in the score, which accompanies a show-down scene in a remarkably comfortable Viennese prison in the last of the three acts. It then cuts back to the bell striking six, marking the end of the central ball scene, and cuts back again to the vigorous waltz which represents the climax of the Orlofsky festivities. A sentimental episode from the first act is followed by an increasingly impatient effort to get back to where the action is and the earlier tunes are duly recalled in an irresistibly reckless recapitulation.

Johann Strauss II

Auf der Jagd (At the Hunt) Polka, Op.373

Just as the ballroom supplied operetta with some of its most successful numbers, usually in the form of waltzes or polkas, so operetta replenished the ballroom repertoire with selections of its most successful numbers, usually in the form of waltzes or polkas. Rosen aus dem Süden (“Roses from the South”), for example, one of the most sophisticated of all Viennese medley waltzes, is made up of tunes from Johann II’s operetta, Das Spitzentuch der Königin (The Queen’s Lace Handkerchief), The polka Auf der Jagd (At the Hunt) - a title which invites a particularly colourful use of horns and trumpets - comes from a Strauss operetta much admired by Brahms, Cagliostro in Wien (Cagliostro in Vienna).

Johann Strauss II

From Die Fledermaus: Rosalinde’s Csárdás (“Klänge der Heimat”)

Among the guests at Prince Orlofsky’s ball are Rosalinde and her parlour maid Adele, neither of them invited in her own name and neither aware of the other’s presence. Rosalinde’s disguise as a Hungarian countess is so effective that it deceives even her own husband, Gabriel von Eisenstein, who is also incognito and is posing as a French marquis. It is in order to prove her Hungarian credentials that Rosalinde takes it upon herself to sing the longest and most elaborate aria in the whole score - a csárdás introduced by an authentic-sounding Hungarian gypsy clarinet and consisting of a characteristically nostalgic slow section and a brilliantly fiery ending.

Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)

Eljen a Magyár Polka, Op.332

As if there were not enough occasions to celebrate at home in Vienna, the composer members of the Strauss family were skilled in adapting their art to celebrations anywhere else it was required, from Pest to Pavlovsk. Johann and his younger brother Josef made a brief visit to Pest for the Hungarian National Festival in 1869, Josef taking his Andrássy March and Johann his Eljen a Magyár Polka. Dedicated “to the noble Hungarian nation,” Eljen a Magyár (Long live the Magyar) is a delightful combination of everything expected of the quick polka in ballrooms everywhere with zestful Hungarian-gypsy tunefulness and discreetly exotic orchestration.

Johann II & Josef Strauss

Pizzicato Polka

A polka for plucked strings only was a brilliant idea: it would provide a memorably alliterative title, it would be a novel sound and, since the polka doesn’t require sustained melodic lines, it wouldn’t seem unnatural to deny the string players the use of their bows. But it was easier said than done, as Josef Strauss found when his elder brother tried to persuade him to write a Pizzicato Polka for their season in the Vauxhall Pavilion at Pavlosk in 1869. In the end they collaborated on it - amusing themselves, no doubt, not only by scoring the sudden shifts in dynamics, from fortissimo to pianissimo and back again, but also by writing in the pauses which give the conductor an opportunity to tease his instrumentalists while keeping them anxiously waiting for the next beat.

Johann Strauss I

Cachucha-Galopp, Op.97 (orchestrated by John Georgiadis)

The best known example of the Spanish cachucha - or the best known in this country at least - is a chorus in The Gondoliers (“Dance a cachucha”) that refers to “the reckless delight of that wildest of dances!” Something of that recklessness must have inspired the elder Johann Strauss who, in tribute to the dancer Fanny Elssler, contrived in his Cachucha-Galopp to combine the rhythms of two wild dances within an hour before the ball it was intended for. According to someone who was there, “it was performed without rehearsal, accorded exceptional applause and repeated three times.”

Johann Strauss II

Waltz: An der schönen blauen Donau (By the Beautiful Blue Danube), Op.314

By long-standing tradition the last item in the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Day concerts is always An der schönen blauen Donau (By the Beautiful Blue Danube), the most famous of all waltzes. Written in 1867, it has achieved the status of a Viennese folksong, or anthem even. Although the original version, written for the Vienna Men’s Choral Association, has fairly frivolous words supplied by the Association’s poet Josef Seyl, the choral version usually performed these days has a new text which, added in 1890, confirms the depth of the local sentiment inspired by the waltz in the meantime. But that choral version doesn’t have the splendid coda which in the orchestral version recapitulates and develops the main themes of four of the five sections, referring back to the leisurely introduction and effortlessly completing a perfectly integrated construction.

Gerald Larner ©2005