CBSO Viennese 2011

Dancing along the Danube

Vienna and Budapest have more than the Danube in common. Less than 150 miles apart, the two cities have long been linked in all kinds of ways – politically, commercially, socially, artistically, not least musically. But the river has always been the direct physical connection between them. One of the greatest of all Viennese assets came by way of the Danube when, in about 1750, Johann Michael Strauss travelled by way of the river from the Hungarian capital to settle in the Austrian capital. His grandson Johann Baptist, who learned to love Viennese dance music in his father’s tavern in the suburb of Leopoldstat, was destined to become the founder of the Strauss musical dynasty – a dynasty comprising four generations of composers, beginning with Johann I himself and including not only his three exceptionally talented sons Johann II, Josef and Eduard but also Eduard’s less talented son Johann III and Johann III’s nephew Eduard II.

While Hungary had little or nothing to do with the early development of either the Viennese waltz or the polka, like most Austrian composers from Haydn onwards, Johann I and his sons were fascinated by Hungarian or, more precisely, Hungarian-gypsy music. Johann I wrote several Hungarian galops and a waltz, Emlék Pestre, dedicated to “the noble Hungarian nation” after a visit to Pest in 1833. As for Johann II, as well as comparatively minor pieces like the Pesther Csárdás and the Éljen a Magyár Polka, he wrote a Hungarian-inspired operetta Der Zigeunerbaron and a comic opera, Ritter Pásmán, which is also set in Hungary.

If Ritter Pásmán was too ambitious a project for a composer of operettas, Der Zigeunerbaron proved to be second in popularity among Johann II’s stage works only to Die Fledermaus – which indicates how much the Viennese public enjoyed the rhythmic zest and the exotic melodies and harmonies of Hungarian-gypsy music. So it is not entirely surprising that the gap in the Viennese operetta market left by the death of Johann II in 1899 was most successfully filled by two Hungarian composers and long-term Viennese residents – Franz Lehár, who learned to be more Viennese than the    Viennese, and Emmerich Kálmán, who combined the waltz with Hungarian-gypsy music in much the same way as Johann II in the trend-setting Ziegeunerbaron. This was not true Hungarian folk music – as Béla Bartók, at one time a fellow student of Kálmán in Budapest, was at pains to demonstrate – but it bothered the Viennese not at all. It had come to the city by way of the Danube and that was authentic enough for them.

Franz von Suppé (1819-1895)

Die leichte Kavallerie (Light Cavalry) Overture

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 operettas recently imported 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 many of them are now remembered only by their overtures, it is not so much because the operettas are so very inferior as because the overtures are so very good.   

Suppé was a master of the overture from an early stage in his career, as he demonstrated in Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna in 1844. The Light Cavalry Overture – written for a two-act comic opera at the Carltheater in 1866 – is one of the most popular of all his compositions. Not surprisingly, it makes a special feature of military material, from the ceremonial fanfares that open and close the piece to the brilliant trumpet gallop associated in the operetta with a cavalry ride across the Hungarian plains. The Hungarian setting also allowed Suppé to indulge a characteristic Viennese taste for Hungarian flavouring, as in the lively dance that opens the main section of the overture and the passionate melody for lower strings introduced by a clarinet cadenza in the middle.     

Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)

Eljen a Magyár (Long live the Magyars) Quick Polka Op.332

In 1869 Johann and his younger brother Josef made a brief visit to Pest for the Hungarian National Festival, Josef taking his Andrássy March and Johann his Eljen a Magyár Polka. Dedicated “to the noble Hungarian nation,” Eljen a Magyár (Long live the Magyars) is a delightful combination of everything expected of the quick polka in ballrooms everywhere with zestful Hungarian-gypsy tunefulness and discreetly exotic orchestration.

Johann Strauss II

Csárdás from Ritter Pasman (Knight Pasman) Op.441

There is no better demonstration of Johann II’s Hungarian credentials than the Csárdás from Ritter Pasman. On the first performance of Ritter Pasman on New year’s Day in 1892 the general consensus of opinion was that the composer, a brilliant success in the comparatively humble form of operetta, had been overambitious in attempting to write a full-scale comic opera for an institution as august as the Vienna Court Opera. But it was also agreed that the ballet music in the third act – a polka, a waltz and a csárdás – was uncommonly inspired. The Csárdás is particularly effective in the original version, featuring not only a solo violin but also a cimbalom to add characteristic Hungarian colouring. But in whatever version it is performed, it is unquestionably idiomatic in both the lassu, the highly expressive slow section, and the exhilaratingly vigorous friss which becomes ever wilder as it nears the end..           

Franz Lehár (1870–1948)

Zigeunerliebe (Gypsy Love) Waltzes

Zigeunerliebe, one of the most successful of Lehár’s pre-war operettas – alongside The Merry Widow and The Count of Luxembourg – is set on the the border between Hungary and Romania. This naturally gives the composer many opportunities to indulge himself in the Hungarian-gypsy idiom he knew so well, particularly since one of the principal characters is a gypsy violinist. Although most of the waltzes he chose from Zigeunerliebe to make a concert piece would not be out of place in a Viennese ballroom, there is one, heard on fervently passionate strings not far from the beginning and again near the end, which unmistakably reflects the operetta’s Balkan setting.     

Johann Strauss II

Entrance March from Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron)

The score of Der Zigeunerbaron – which begins with an overture cleverly designed in the shape of an Austro-Hungarian rhapsody – is an intriguing if sometimes incongruous mix of gypsy music and Viennese polkas and waltzes. The Entrance March in the third act, however, has nothing Hungarian or specifically Viennese in it since it is a brisk military march accompanying the triumphant return of the Imperial troops from a Spanish campaign. According to the composer’s instruction to the management of the Theater and der Wien, where the operetta was first performed in 1885, “The Entrance March must be imposing. About 80-100 soldiers (on foot, on horse), camp-followers in Hungarian, Viennese (and Spanish) dress, common folk, children with shrubs and flowers – which latter they strew before the returning soldiers – must appear.”

Franz Lehár

Hungarian Fantasy Op.45

Before he devoted himself to operetta Lehár made a living as a violinist in the band of the 50th Austrian Infantry Regiment (which was directed by his father). He supplemented his meagre military income by giving concerts for officers in the regiment, extending his repertoire with opera and folk-song arrangements and the occasional piece of his own. It was for this purpose that in the late 1880s he wrote his Magyar Ábránd or Hungarian Fantasy, a work which demonstrates what a secure command of instrumental and compositional technique he had recently developed at the Prague Conservatoire. It begins with a short but atmospheric orchestral introduction evocative of the Hungarian countryside and then, on the entry of the solo violin, adheres to the traditional csárdás pattern. An expressive slow section based on a traditional gypsy melody is followed by a series of dances varying in tempo but reserving the quickest and most brilliant of them until towards the end.

Johann Strauss II

Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald (Tales from the Vienna Woods) Waltzes Op.325

The best thing that ever came out of the Vienna woods, the composer seems to be telling us, is the Viennese waltz. Certainly, the Ländler, the peasant ancestor of the most sophisticated of 19th-century dance forms, originated in the countryside round Vienna – the rustic charms of which are poetically evoked, alongside the usual waltz-time fanfares, in the extended introduction to these Tales from the Vienna Woods. And it is from this pastoral background that, after a picturesque flute cadenza, one of the main themes first emerges, not as a waltz at this stage but as a simple Ländler played on a zither (or, failing that, on muted strings). It is introduced in its waltz form – on strings and woodwind this time – in the second of the four central sections of the work, each one of which has its own main and subsidiary themes and sometimes a counter-theme in the accompaniment as well. Although it is not recalled along with the other main themes in a coda long enough to match the scale of the introduction, it is heard for the last time, as a Ländler again on zither (or muted violins), in a brief but show-stopping episode of nostalgia just before the end.

Johann Strauss II

Vom Donaustrande (From the Banks of the Danube) Quick Polka Op.356

The polka equivalent of the Blue Danube waltz is nowhere near as seductive as that famous work, but polkas were not meant to be seductive. Taken from the ballet music for Johann II’s Roman Carnival operetta – which he proudly called his “polka opera” – it is remarkable for sustaining its rhythmic energy, not to mention its cheerful vulgarity, for longer than most of its kind.

Johann Strauss II

Wiener Bonbons (Viennese Bonbons) Waltzes Op.307

Considering that it is dedicated “in deepest respect” to no less a personage than Princess Pauline Metternich-Winneburg, wife of the highly influential Austrian Ambassador in Paris, and that it was to be performed in her presence at a high-profile charity ball in 1866, Wiener Bonbons is not the the grand waltz one might have expected. As the title suggests, Strauss is interested here in more humble pleasures than the imperial splendour he would celebrate in the Emperor Waltz 23 years later. It is as tuneful as the best of Strauss waltzes but in this case it is a matter of sweetly orchestrated, sometimes tantalisingly presented melodic charm – at least until the little trumpet fanfare in the closing bars.

Johann Strauss II

Champagner Polka (Champagne Polka) Op.211

Described by its composer as “a musical joke”, the Champagne Polka – which was written at the height of the polka craze in 1858 – pops its punch line at an early stage and, as the rhythms fizz and the orchestration bubbles, repeats it several times over. While it is a celebration of the high life in one sense, it is also a tribute to the low-life tavern song "Mir is's alles an's, ob i a Geld hab oder kan's !" (Nothing matters to me as long as I have money) which provided the melodic material of the piece.

Fritz Kreisler (1875–1962)

3 Viennese pieces for violin and orchestra

Caprice viennois (Viennese Caprice)

Schön Rosmarin (Beautiful Rosemary)

Marche miniature viennoise (Viennese Miniature March)

Although he was better known in his life time as a violinist – who rarely practised and yet was one of the most accomplished instrumentalists of his day – Fritz Kreisler was also an expert composer. He wrote both under his own name and, notoriously, under the names of long-dead minor composers whose works he claimed to have discovered and edited. He was such an accomplished pasticheur, in fact, that it was difficult for his contemporaries to distinguish between the real thing and the imitation.

Much of the music he acknowledged as his own has a strong Viennese flavour derived from his early years in the city where he was born. One of the earliest and most familiar examples is the Caprice viennois which – except in its capricious beginning, middle and end – is a waltz, but one moving at such slow tempo that tempo that the Strauss family would scarcely have recognised it as such. It might, however, have appealed to Lehár. Also written in 1910, the irresistibly tuneful Schön Rosmarin is another waltz and rather more like the Viennese real thing – which is why Kreisler was for years able to get away with presenting it as one of Three Old Viennese Melodies attributed to Joseph Lanner! The much later (1925) Marche miniature viennoise is a    delightful little invention in march time with a wittily dissonant beginning and a nicely constrasting middle section.

Johann Strauss II

Wiener Blut (Vienna Blood) Waltzes Op.354

The Viennese waltz as Johann II and his brothers developed it – with its four or five main sections offering two tunes each – was a formidable challenge to a composer’s melodic invention. It was a challenge the Strausses were always ready to accept. The dance was their way of life and, what is more, they had perfected the musically rewarding art of setting a waltz melody free from its triple-time accompaniment. The inspired main theme of Wiener Blut, the one that glides in on violins and woodwind once the waltz tempo is established, floats serenely above the persistent pizzicato rhythm in the bass and even contradicts it from time to time. Melodies of this distinction – there is rarely more than one in each waltz – are usually anticipated in the introduction, as this one is in an episode featuring an unusually expressive string ensemble. Like its counterparts in most other Viennese waltzes, it is then presented in its definitive form as the first main theme and is finally recalled in glory at the end. Wiener Blut was first performed, incidentally, at an imperial wedding celebration in 1873, when the composer made his debut as director of the Vienna Philharmonic – which no doubt explains the sophisticated string scoring in the introduction.

Johann Strauss II

Leichtes Blut (Light of Heart) Quick Polka Op.319

Johann II’s Leichtes Blut polka was written in 1867 in the same fruitful season as the Blue Danube waltz. If it is not as familiar an example of its kind as its waltz-time companion, Leichtes Blut is certainly one of the best of all polkas. In fact, it is a perfect little inspiration, irresistibly propelled through the outer sections by a spring-heeled skipping rhythm, lifted by an exuberant new melody in the middle, and finished off by an ingenious little coda.

Johann Strauss II

An der schönen blauen Donau (By the Beautiful Blue Danube) Waltzes Op.314

The Blue Danube is the most famous of all waltzes. Written in 1867, it has achieved the status of a Viennese folk song, or anthem even. Although the original version, written for the Vienna Men’s Choral Association, has fairly frivolous words attached to it, the choral version usually performed today has a new text which, added in 1890, confirms the depth of the local sentiment inspired by the waltz in the meantime. But that doesn’t have the splendid coda which in the orchestral version recapitulates and develops the main themes of four of the five main sections, referring back to the leisurely introduction and effortlessly completing a perfectly integrated construction. Johann II’s melodic genius was such that even if the river itself were to dry up Vienna and the Danube would still be inseparable.

Johann Strauss I (1804-1849)

Radetzky March Op.228

Although Johann II more or less eclipsed his father as a composer of ballroom dances, none of his fifty or so marches can compete in popularity with Johann I’s Radetzky March, which means as much to Vienna as any of the Strauss waltzes, even The Blue Danube. It was written to celebrate the decisive victory of the Austrian Army led by the 82-year-old Field-Marshal Johann Josef Wenzel, Count Radetzky von Radetz, over the Italian forces at Custozza in 1848. Reputedly completed in no more than two hours and incorporating two Viennese folk songs, it is one of the least solemn and one of the most effective pieces of its kind. For the Viennese at least, “It fires the blood like paprika.”

Gerald Larner © 20011