CBSO Viennese 2012

The Others

In the most traditional concerts of this kind, notably those given by the Vienna Philharmonic in the Musikverein on New Year’s day, it is rare to hear music by any composer who does not bear the name of Strauss. But, brilliant and industrious though they were, it took more than the Strauss family to establish the ballroom style we associate with Vienna in the second half of the 19th century and then to sustain it through the time when waltzes, polkas and operettas containing example of both were most in demand.

Happily represented in this evening’s programme, for example, is Joseph Lanner, who is believed to have learned his trade in the dance orchestra of Michael Pamer alongside another young violinist, the founder of the Strauss waltz-time dynasty, Johann I. First in collaboration and then in competition with Strauss, Lanner had a vital role in developing the popular Viennese dance forms and the commercial organisations behind them. The reason why the name of Strauss rather than that of Lanner is now overwhelmingly associated with the Viennese waltz is not that Johann I was an overwhelmingly better musician. Johann Strauss had the good fortune to father three sons – Johann II, Joseph and Eduard – all of whom were more than capable of carrying on where he left off. Joseph Lanner on the other hand had one son, August, who had both the talent and the inclination to follow him but who, sadly, died at the age of twenty-one.

As for the composers who, along with the Strauss family, sustained the insatiable demand for ballroom dances and operettas in the Viennese style, the prime example is Franz Lehár, who kept it going well into the 20th century (becoming, incidentally and rather unfortunately, one of Adolf Hitler’s favourite composers). While he is not included as a non-Strauss representative in this programme, there is room for two composers of an older generation. Carl Zeller is a particularly remarkable phenomenon in that he was not a full-time musician. But he had a thorough musical training, becoming a member of the then equivalent of the Vienna Boys’ Choir and then studying composition while working for a doctorate in law at Graz University.

When he was not too busy in his day job as a civil servant he turned his attention to writing operettas, the two most successful of the seven he completed being Der Vogelhändler and Der Obersteiger. As the outstanding vocal numbers from those two works demonstrate, his great talent was in writing waltz songs.

Zeller’s close contemporary, Karl Millöcker, on the other hand, was a thoroughly professional musician, starting as a flautist, becoming a conductor and than, after his great success with Der Bettelstudent (The Beggar Student) devoting himself mainly to composition. His 15 full-length operettas brought him recognition as one of the three great Viennese exponents of the art, alongside Johann Strauss II and Franz von Suppé. While Der Bettelstudent is still performed more or less as he wrote it, two of his best scores, Gasparone and Gräfin Dubarry, are more familiar in later and not always appropriate arrangements.

Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)

Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron): Overture

Like many Viennese musicians, Johann Strauss fancied himself as an exponent of the Hungarian idiom – or, to be more precise, the Hungarian-gypsy idiom, which was almost as popular in Vienna as it was in Budapest not so very many miles down the Danube to the East. The show-stopping status of Rosalinde’s Csárdás in Die Fledermaus is a good indication of the favoured position of that kind of music in Viennese society at the time. As it happens, although Johann II didn’t have much time to devote himself to the Hungarian idiom – waltzes and polkas were what the public wanted from him – the most ambitious of his stage works, Ritter Pásmán, and one of the most successful, The Gypsy Baron, are both settings of libretti based on Hungarian subjects.

The Overture to Der Zigeunerbaron is constructed, appropriately enough, like a Hungarian rhapsody. It begins with a slow section, anticipating the gruff rhythms associated with the gypsies on their entry in the first act, presenting expressive melodic improvisations on woodwind and dwelling lovingly on a pretty oboe tune that is to be taken up later by the (to all appearances) gypsy heroine Saffi. Although the quick section begins with a polka, most of it is based on Hungarian material. After the necessary waltz-time intervention, based on “So voll Fröhlichkeit” from the second act, Strauss is quick to restore his gypsy disguise, flaunting it most effectively of all in a brilliant coda with characteristically spirited rhythmic syncopations.

Carl Zeller (1842-1898)

Der Vogelhändler: “Schenkt man sich Rosen in Tirol” (Roses from Tyrol)

First performed in Vienna in 1891, Der Vogelhändler (The Bird Seller) is set in the Rhineland and concerns the love affair of Christel, the local postmistress, and Adam, a bird seller from the Tyrol. Adam’s most popular number, a slow waltz song, expresses his wonder at being given a bouquet by a girl he doesn’t know: after all, when you give flowers in the Tyrol you give your heart as well. Written originally for tenor, it sounds just as good, or even better, when sung by a soprano.

Johann Strauss II

Rosen aus dem Süden (Roses from the South): Waltz Op.388

Although Johann II devoted most of his creative energies in the last thirty years of his life to writing operettas, this did not seriously slow down his production of dances for the ballroom or concert hall. Every Viennese operetta had to be furnished with a generous allocation of songs and other numbers in waltz time and it was a comparatively simple matter to issue these pieces in instrumental arrangements for use outside the theatre. One of the most celebrated of all Strauss waltzes, Roses from the South, is actually a selection of the best waltz tunes from the now largely forgotten operetta, Das Spitzentuch der Königin (The Queen’s Lace Handkerchief), which was successfully first performed at the Theater an der Wien in 1880. Unusually for Strauss, although he anticipates it at the very beginning of the slow introduction, he avoids presenting his most distinguished melody as the main theme – it appears on violins and horn with harp accompaniment as the second of the four waltzes – and he doesn’t recall it in the exuberant and otherwise comprehensive coda.     

Joseph Lanner (1801-1843)

Hungarian Galop Op.97

Like most of his colleagues, Lanner fancied himself in the Hungarian idiom. He was also a specialist in the galop, which is closely related to both the Viennese polka and Parisian cancan and which achieved the height of its popularity in Viennese ballrooms in the 1830s. Lanner’s Hungarian Galops – which are part of a whole series of Italian, Spanish and English Galops – are unmistakable in their national origin, particularly this one where he celebrated the Rakoczi March ten years before Berlioz did in his now very much more familar Marche hongroise.

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 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

Tritsch-Tratsch: Quick polka Op.214

Tritsch-Tratsch has always been one of the most popular of Viennese polkas. After its first performance in 1858 there was such a demand for it that the sheet music was sold out within a few days of its publication and was hastily reprinted – to the delight no doubt of the owners of the recently issued Tritsch-Tratsch magazine from which it takes its name. A brilliant example of the Polka schnell or quick polka, it demonstrates just how swiftly and how irresistibly chit-chat or tittle-tattle can get round a crowded ballroom.

Johann Strauss II

Frühlingsstimmen (Voices of Spring): Waltz Op.410

The Viennese waltz, as Johann Strauss I developed it and his even more talented son Johann Strauss II perfected it, is not just a one-tune affair. Like Voices of Spring, it might consist of many as four distinct waltz-time sections in succession, each one of them based on two different themes. Clearly, as the composer of well over a hundred waltzes (not including those in his operettas), Johann II was a uniquely resourceful melodist. Written as a vocal show piece for the coloratura soprano Bianca Bianchi, Voices of Spring was dismissed on its first performance in 1883 as “not very melodious” – which would suggest that Mme Bianchi didn’t sing it very well. Certainly, it is outstanding for the quality of its tunes, not least the sensitively syncopated and delicately scored first theme of the second section. Although, unlike some others among Johann II’s more ambitious waltzes, Voices of Spring has no introduction, it does have a coda to recall the vigorous opening theme and put a brilliant ending to the piece.

Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)

Die Fledermaus: Overture

By far the most successful of all Johann Strauss’s operettas, Die Fledermaus    is the only one set in the Vienna of his day. So it has    a special status in that its waltz and polka numbers numbers are, for once, presented in their true social context. Absurdly unlikely though the events of its tortuous plot undeniably are, it is clear from Die Fledermaus that the dances fashionable in Strauss’s Vienna were products of a flourishing good-time industry catering to the tastes of the upper and professional middle classes. Die Fledermaus is all about having a good time. Other issues arise – like revenge, marital fidelity, social pretension, crime and punishment – but none of these trivialities is treated as seriously as the desirability of indulging oneself, preferably at someone else’s expense.

Not the least entertaining part of the operetta 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 embarrassing nickname of “Die Fledermaus” (The Bat) and how he gets his own back at a lavish and frankly dissolute party thrown by the Russian Prince Orlofsky. It begins with the most dramatic music in the score, which accompanies a confrontation scene in a remarkably comfortable Viennese prison in the last act, cuts back to the bell striking six to mark 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.

Die Fledermaus: The Laughing Song (“Mein Herr Marquis”)

One way out of an embarrassing situation is to laugh it off – just as Adele does in    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.   

Johann Strauss II

Nordseebilder (North-Sea Pictures) Op.390: Waltz

The Strauss family is not normally associated with the sea. Landlocked though Austria is, however, the Strausses were such frequent travellers that, while being unable to accumulate Air Miles, they must have collected many memories of their voyages. Nordseebilder actually originated in a holiday taken by Johann II and his wife Angelika on the North Frisian island of Föhr where, if the music is anything to go by, they met some fairly inclement weather. On its first performance, conducted by Eduard Strauss in the Vienna Musikverein in November 1879, the audience must have been surprised to hear the atmospheric seascape introduction and, once the waltz gets going, the waves rising and falling on the cellos below the tune on violins and woodwind. After that, it reverts to the ballroom for a few more conventional waltzes – only to sail into a storm with threatening trombones and percussion. High spirits are restored as the main theme returns in a cheerful coda.

Johann & 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 near St Petersburg 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.

Carl Zeller

Der Obersteiger: “Don’t be cross” (Sei nicht bös)

“Don’t be cross” (Sei nicth bös), the most popular number in Zeller’s last-but-one operetta Der Obersteiger, is actually a tenor aria – sung in the original by Martin, a foreman miner to his indecisive girlfriend Nelly – but ever since Elisabeth Schumann took a liking to its disarming waltz-time melody, it has become a favourite soprano item. It probably sounds even better that way.

Johann Strauss II

Auf der Jagd (Hunting Polka)

Auf der Jagd comes from Cagliostro in Wien, an opertta set in Vienna – not the Vienna the Strauss family knew but the Vienna of the 18th-century alchemist and conman Count Alessandro Cagliostro. The setting, in a period well before the Viennese waltz and polka were even thought even, did not of course prevent Johann II from writing several examples of each for an audience which expected nothing else from him. Auf der Jagd is not only a brilliant example of the Viennese quick polka but also a demonstration, with its gun shots and hunting horns, of the composer’s skill in securing the sounds he wanted. “There is no one who is as sure as he is in such matters”, said an admiring Johannes Brahms.

Karl Millöcker (1842–1899)

Die Dubarry: “I Give my Heart” (Ich schenk’ mein Herz)

Karl Millöcker is best known for his operetta Der Bettelstudent (The Beggar Student) which was a great success from its first performance in Vienna in 1882 until well after the Second World War, by when it had inspired no fewer than five film versions. His Gräfin Dubarry which was written three years earlier, enjoyed no such success and it was only in 1931, when it was adapted as Die Dubarry (The Dubarry Girl) by Theo Mackeben that it caught on. Four years later it made it into the cinema under a title derived from its most popular number “I Give my Heart”. A waltz-time confection, it is first sung in the middle of the operetta    by Marie-Jeanne Beçu, a pretty milliner who is later to become the Comtesse Dubarry and, finally, the mistress of Lous XV no less. If the sound and style of it seem alien to a composer who died in the same year as Johann Strauss II that is because the score was comprehensively rewritten by Mackleben a whole generation later. It is no less melodious for that, however.

Johann Strauss II

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

The Blue Danube waltz is not only the last word in flattery – the Danube in Vienna is a muddy brown in most lights – but also the ultimate example of the concert waltz. In company with some of the most distinguished examples of its kind, it consists of as many as five distinct waltz-time sections, each one of them based on two different themes. Written for the Vienna Men’s Choral Association in 1867, this most familiar of Viennese waltzes was originally scored for chorus and orchestra and in that form it has achieved something like the status of a national anthem. The choral version, however, does not have the splendid coda which in the orchestral version recalls and briefly develops the main themes of four of the five sections, referring back to the leisurely introduction and effortlessly completing a perfectly integrated construction. It flows just as easily as the Danube itself, and far more colourfully.     

Gerald Larner © 2012