halle Viennese 2011 — CBSO Viennese New Year Concerts | The Gerald Larner Programme Note Archive

Dancing on the Danube (for Manchester)

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 up 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 – no fewer than 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.

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 many 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 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, once a fellow student with Kálmán in Budapest, was at pains to demonstrate – but the Viennese didn’t worry about that. It had come to the city up the Danube and that was authentic enough for them.

Dancing on the Danube (for out of town)

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 II’s Hungarian-inspired operetta Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron) proved to be second in popularity among Johann II’s many 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 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.

Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)

Eljen a Magyár (Long live the Magyar), quick polka) Op.332

Johann II 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 is a delightful combination of everything expected of the quick polka in ballrooms everywhere with zestful Hungarian-gypsy tunefulness and discreetly exotic orchestration.

Franz Lehár (1870-1948)

Die lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow): Folk Dance and Viljalied (Vilja Song)

The most successful of all Lehár’s operettas – the most successful of all Viennese operettas next to Strauss’s Die Fledermaus – was, and still is, Die lustige Witwe (“The Merry Widow”), which was first performed in Vienna in 1905. Set partly in the Paris embassy of an imaginary, impoverished 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.” The most treasured Pontevedran asset is the merry widow herself, Hanna Glawari, who is not only beautiful but also so rich that the loss of her personal fortune through marriage to any but another Pontevedran would sink the the country’s whole economy. Her most popular number, which she sings at a glamorous party in her Parisian residence, is Lehár’s clever and highly attractive idea of what a Pontevedran folk song would sound like: it tells the story of Vilja, an irresistible wood nymph who allows a huntsman to fall in love with her and then, to his inconsolable despair, disappears . . . . Hanna proves to be similarly irresistible – to the one Pontevedran she fancies – and finally, unlike Vilja, commits herself to him.

The Vilja Song is preceded here, as it is in the operetta, by a kolo, a vigorous dance popular in several Balkan countries, evidently not excluding Pontevedro.

Johann Strauss II

Seid umschlungen, Millionen Waltz, Op.443

Although it takes its title from a line in Schiller’s Ode to Joy, familiar to every musician from the last movement of Beethoven’s “Choral” Symphony, Seid umschlungen, Millionen has little to do with Beethoven. Dedicated to none other than Johannes Brahms, the composer’s great friend and humble admirer, it is perhaps the most classically inclined of all Strauss waltzes – with its serious introduction, its expressive strings anticipating the main theme, the woodwind forest murmurs, the yearning main theme itself, the abundant array of secondary themes, the exhilarating recapitulation and the impressive coda.

Franz Lehár

Paganini: ”Love Live for Ever” (Liebe du Himmel auf Erden)

Although The Merry Widow was the most successful of al Lehár’s operettas, he scored many other hits, not least with Paganini in 1925. Based on an entirely imaginary episode in the life of the legendary violinist, it was the first of several Lehár operettas written with Richard Tauber in mind as the leading tenor. One of its most celebrated numbers, however, is for a soprano, the Princess who falls in love with Paganini and who, as she makes quite clear in ”Love Live for Ever”, is most reluctant to lose him. Although the operetta is set in Lucca in the early nineteenth century, no one in Vienna in the early twentieth would have been surprised to hear Princess Anna Elisa pouring her hear out in a Viennese waltz song.

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Hungarian Dance No.5 in G minor (orch.Parlow)

Brahms, who was to become one of Johann II’s greatest admirers, was an enthusiast for Hungarian-gypsy music even before he settled in Vienna. Having partnered a Hungarian violinist called Eduard Reményi on concert tours in his early twenties, he was intimately familiar with the idiom and retained his affection for it to the end of his life. His Hungarian Dances for piano duet, drawing on his memories of the music he had played with Reményi but on other sources too, were written between 1858 and 1880, the later ones in Vienna. Unfortunately No.5 in G minor is not one of the three that Brahms orchestrated himself but,

having Brahms’s treatment of No.1 in the same key as a model, the composer of the present arrangement could scarcely go wrong. Based on Béla Kéler’s Souvenir de Bártfai, it is a characteristic display of rhythmic vigour with a particularly stylish episode of syncopations following the explosively energetic first entry of the main theme.

Johann Strauss II

Wein, Weib und Gesang (Wine, Women and Song), Waltz, Op.333

Like the Blue Danube Waltz a couple of year before it, Wine, Women and Song was written for the Vienna Men’s Choral Association, for whom Johann II was to provide no fewer than nine choral compositions in all – six waltzes, two polkas and a march. As with the Blue Danube, however, he scored it in such a way that it could be performed as an orchestral piece, without the choral parts, and it is in this form that it has achieved its universal popularity. While there is no need to refer to the text supplied by the Association’s official poet Josef Seyl for the choral version, it might be as well to remember the old Viennese rhyme:

He who doesn’t like wine, women and song

Will remain a fool his whole life long.

Certainly, that hedonistic sentiment is accurately reflected in the four cheerful waltzes that make up the main part of the piece. The introduction, on the other hand, one of the longest and most developed of its kind, begins in a thoughtful frame of mind with an Andante quasi religioso which is not only sensitively scored but also discreetly contrapuntal in texture. It shouldn’t be taken too seriously, however, since the composer himself has no qualms about transforming his “religious” melody into the second of the waltzes. The length of the introduction – which also includes a march and the obligatory fanfare as well as an anticipation of the fourth waltz – is compensated for by a very short coda.

Emmerich Kálmán (1882-1953)

Gräfin Mariza (Countess Mariza): Höre ich Zigeunergeigen (I hear gypsy fiddles)

Kálmán settled in Vienna after the encouraging reception of his first operetta – Tatárjárá in the original Hungarian, Ein Herbstmanöver in the German version – at the Theater an der Wien in 1909. He remained in Vienna until the Anschluss thirty years later, writing a string of operetta successes, including above all Die Csárdásfürstin (The Gypsy Princess or The Csárdás Princess) in 1915 and Gräfin Mariza (Countess Mariza) in 1924. Most of them are set in Hungary, like Gräfin Mariza, or include important Hungarian episodes so that Kálmán could legitimately indulge his love of Hungarian-gypsy music. Following the precedent set by Johann II in Der Zigeunerbaron, he always contrived to combine the Hungarian element with the required proportion of Viennese waltzes.

One of the attractions of the Hungarian castle owned by Countess Mariza is its gypsy band, which is the first thing she asks for when she returns to her estate after a long absence. She greets the sound of gypsy fiddles, appropriately enough, with a csárdás, most effectively alternating slow reflective music with stylishly lively dance episodes.

Franz Lehár

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 The Merry Widow, one of the major attractions of wich is a no less tuneful and even more sentimental waltz.

Johann Strauss II

Unter Donner und Blitz (Thunder and Lightning), quick polka, Op.324

Is Thunder and Lightning the most popular of Johann II’s polkas because it has the best tunes or because it has the best title? The answer must be that it has both, together with a series of brilliantly witty observations on the weather – a roll of thunder in the opening bars followed by a flurry of evasive activity, a hectic middle section where the storm rages in lightning cymbal clashes and bass-drum thunder claps, and a final section which betrays not the least sign of a dampening of the irrepressible Viennese genius for having a good time.

Johann Strauss II

Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald (Tales from the Vienna Woods), Waltz, 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 string 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 violins), in a brief but show-stopping episode of nostalgia just before the end.

Carl Zeller (1842-1898)

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

Though once a member of the Vienna Boys’ Choir and an obviously promising musician in his youth, Carl Zeller decided not to devote his adult life exclusively to music. Even so, as a full-time and high-ranking civil servant, he helped to revive the declining fortune of Viennese operetta in the early 1890s with Der Vogelhändler (The Bird handler) and wrote an equally successful example, Der Obersteiger (The Master Miner) in 1894. The most popular number in the latter work, “Sei nicht bös” (Don’t be cross), 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.

Franz Lehár

Frederica: ”Why did you kiss my heart awake?” (Warum hast du mich wach geküsst?)

Although it is set in Germany in the time of that country’s greatest poet, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and was first performed in Berlin in 1928, Frederica takes us back to Vienna, where it had its second production, at the Johann Strauss Theatre, a year later. Richard Tauber was in the leading role on both occasions. It is based, very loosely, on a real-life episode experienced by Goethe when, as a young man, he was in love with Friederike Brion, a daughter of the pastor of Sesenheim. In the operetta the affair comes to an end when she, realising that their relationship could be harmful to his career, apparently rejects him. “Why did you kiss my heart awake?” she sings to herself – the pathos of her situation emphasised by poignant scoring for woodwind and strings – when she has made her noble, self-sacrificing decision.

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.

George Gershwin (1898-1937)

By Strauss

Written towards the end of George and Ira Gershwin’s joint career – for Freedman and Hart’s revue The show is on at the Winter Garden Theatre, New York, in 1936 – “By Strauss” is one of their most sophisticated collaborations. After an introductory (and probably unconscious) allusion to the Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales, it takes flight in a waltz tune with authentically Viennese rhythmic verve and melodic appeal. Though not immediately successful, it owes much of its later popularity to its performance by Gene Kelly and Oscar Levant in the 1951 film “An American in Paris.”

Johann Strauss II

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

The Blue Danube, as it is known in this country, 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 be inseparable.