Overture: Die Fledermaus (1874) — CBSO Viennese New Year Concerts

Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)

Overture: Die Fledermaus (1874)

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 them 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.

Johann Strauss II

Die Fledermaus: Adele’s Laughing Song

One way out of an embarrassing situation is to laugh it off – just as Adele does in Die Fledermaus. She is a parlour maid who has taken the evening off ostensibly “to visit a sick aunt” but in reality to attend Orlofsky’s ball, where she is introduced as an actress under the name of 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.

Emil Waldteufel (1837-1915)

Estudiantina (Band of Students): Waltz Op.191

The Waldteufel family, which originated in Strasbourg (hence the Germanic name), occupied much the same place in Paris as the Strauss family in Vienna. Emil, by far the most accomplished composer in the family, was fashionable also in London in which city, thanks to royal patronage, he enjoyed considerable success. Estudiantina – one of the most popular of his compositions next to Les Patineurs (The Skaters’ Waltz) – follows a French convention of paying tribute to admired music by other composers. In this case Estudiantina by Waldteufel’s Parisian contemporary Paul Lacome is the brilliant main theme of a concert waltz featuring three more tunes in the then voguish Spanish idiom made to fit into waltz time.

Franz Lehár (1870-1948)

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

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 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 – until finally, unlike Vilja, she commits herself to him

Emmerich Kálmán (1882-1953)

Gräfin Mariza (Countess Maritza): Overture

The Hiungarian composer Emmerich Kálmán settled in Vienna after the encouraging reception of his first operetta at the Theater an der Wien in 1909. He remained in Vienna until the Anschluss 30 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 Maritza) in 1924. Most of them are set in Hungary, like Gräfin Mariza, or include important Hungarian episodes so that Kálmán could legitimately display his command of the Hungarian-gypsy idiom which, following the precedent set by Johann Strauss in Der Zigeunerbaron, he contrived to combine with the required proportion of Viennese waltzes.

Although Gräfin Mariza has no shortage of waltzes, the overture concentrates on the Hungarian-gypsy element in the score. It is presented in the form of a Hungarian rhapsody. Beginning with an impassioned slow introduction, it makes an early feature of an attractively syncopated dance tune and ends with a lively treatment of material which the composer rightly anticipated would be the most popular in the show.

Emmerich Kálmán

Kaiserin Josephine (Empress Josephine): Mein Traum, mein Traum (My Dream, my Dream)

Kaiserin Josephine, written shortly before Kálmán was forced to leave Vienna, is an ambitious piece that was to have been first-performed, like Lehár’s Giuditta, at the prestigious Staatsoper. Politics intervened, however, and it was first seen in Zurich in neutral Switzerland, which didn’t give the work the start it deserved. Even so, several arias have remained in the repertoire, including Josephine’s Mein Traum, mein Traum from the first act. Before she becomes the wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, she offers an uninhibited account of the erotic fulfilment she dreams she will one day enjoy. It takes the form of a sensuous slow waltz so much more luxuriantly orchestrated than anything in Kálmán’s early Viennese career.

Johann Strauss II

Persischer Marsch (Persian March) Op.289

Johann II wrote several marches requiring special exotic effects – Egyptian, Spanish, Russian and this short Persian March. It’s a characteristically witty pastiche in three sections including a march, a central trio section and a coda recalling the march and taking it to a rousing climax.

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

Amor Op.68 No.5

Richard Strauss was, of course, no relation to the Strauss family in Vienna. The foremost of German composers for several decades round the turn of the 20th century, he was active in a far wider range of music than the Viennese Strausses. He did, however, spend some time in Vienna and he certainly learned much about the waltz from the Strauss examples, as his most popular opera Der Rosenkavalier amply demonstrates. There are instances of waltz time in his songs too, though not so much in Amor which, though in triple time, is more about flying than dancing. It is a setting of a poem by Clemens Brentano about the child-god Cupid who fans a fire with his wings, sets them alight and seeks help from the shepherdess, which she gives – but not without risking the danger of being pierced by one of his darts of love. Here Strauss indulges himself in the joy of writing an elaborately decorative, high-lying vocal line, replete with trills and roulades, for an uncommonly agile coloratura soprano to a finely detailed small-orchestral accompaniment.

Johann Strauss II

Freuet euch des Lebens (Enjoy Life): Waltz Op.340

Freuet euch des Lebens has the singular distinction among Strauss waltzes of being quoted in a Mahler symphony – the Ninth, where it has an important expressive function in the first movement. It was actually written for the inaugural ball celebrating the opening of Vienna’s incomparable concert hall, the Musikverein, in 1870. That auspicious occasion no doubt explains the ceremonial beginning with drum roll and fanfare before the entry of the floating melody of the first of five tuneful waltzes, each with its own short counter-subject, that make up this masterful example of the form.

Johann Strauss II

Tritsch-Tratsch: Quick Polka Op.214

Although the polka was almost as popular as the waltz in the 1850s and 60s, it didn’t stay in fashion for anything like as long. It was an exhilarating ballroom exercise but neither as sexy for the dancer nor as interesting for the composer. Its high-energy requirement meant that it rarely lasted longer than three or four minutes while its high-speed rhythmic activity gave the composer little opportunity to do more than put a cheerful tune to it and dress it up in colourful orchestration.

The highly resourceful, magically scored 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.

Franz Lehár

Giuditta: “Meine Lippen sie küssen so heiss” (My lips give such hot kisses)

Giuditta is the opera that crowned Lehár’s long life in the musical theatre. Too serious to be termed an operetta and first performed on no less distinguished a stage than that of the Staatsoper in Vienna in 1934, it is Austria’s equivalent to Carmen. Its heroine, a dancer of mixed Spanish and Moroccan blood, is married to an elderly Spanish maker of bird cages. Not surprisingly in the circumstances, when invited by a handsome young army captain to accompany him to his garrison town in North Africa, she goes with him. In the fourth scene, separated from her lover and unaware that he is in the audience, she is performing in a cabaret at the Alcazar. And what does a Spanish-Moroccan cabaret artist do when attempting to seduce a rich English lord in the Alcazar night club? Well, what else could she do but dance and sing a Viennese waltz? The North African local colour applied to the introduction to the full version of the song does not disguise the place and time of origin of the slow waltz at the heart of it.

Josef Strauss (1827-1870)

Frauenherz (A Woman’s Heart): Polka-Mazurka Op.166

In efforts to increase the musical interest of the polka, the Strauss family developed 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. While it must be said that few of the Strauss polka-mazurkas offer the mazurka’s diagnostic transfer of the rhythmic emphasis from the first beat of the bar to the second or third, this example by Johann II’s younger brother Joseph has enticing tunes and a gentle step which is neither polka nor waltz but somewhere intriguingingly between.

Robert Stolz (1880-1975)

Wien wird bei Nacht erst schön (Vienna’s really beautiful by night) Op.216

Robert Stolz was the last major survivor from the heyday of Viennese operetta. Although he died little more than forty years ago, and although he was so much of our time as to win two Oscars for his work as a composer in Hollywood, he too had been called to the service of operetta before the First World War. He had met Johann II shortly before the latter’s death in 1899, which made him think about writing in a similar popular idiom. He completed his first operetta in 1901 and six years later became conductor at the Theater an der Wien, still the Viennese centre for works of that kind. And he went on writing for the stage until he was well into his eighties, completing no fewer than sixty-five operettas or musicals as well as hundreds of songs and dozens of film scores. His song Wien wird bei Nacht erst schön is a luxuriously harmonised and melodious example of how much the Viennese waltz had slowed down by1915.

Johann Strauss II

Neue Pizzicato-Polka (New Pizzicato Polka) Op.449

The first Pizzicato Polka, written jointly by Johann II and Josef for their Russian season in the Vauxhall Pavilion at Pavlosk in 1869, was so successful that it was bound to breed a sequel. Josef died a year later, however, and it was not until 1892 that Johann wrote a New Pizzicato Polka – for a concert series that his other brother, Eduard, was to give in Hamburg. No less charming if a little less witty than its predecessor, it has the added attraction of a middle section that mixes the sound of the glockenspiel with that of the plucked strings.

Johann Strauss II

Frühlingsstimmen (Voices of Spring): Waltz Op.410

The Viennese concert waltz, as Johann Strauss I developed it and his even more talented son Johann Strauss II perfected it, is never just a one-tune affair. It might consist of many as four or five 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 originally as a vocal 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, as an orchestral or (as on this occasion) vocal waltz, 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 an only very short introduction, it does have a coda to recall the vigorous opening theme and put a brilliant ending to the piece.

Johann Strauss II

Cuckoo Polka (known in Vienna as Im Krapfenwald’l): Polka française) Op.336

Since it is named after Josef Krapf’s well known tavern in the Vienna woods, it would be reasonable to assume that the slow polka Im Krapfenwand’l is another tribute to the countryside the Viennese knew best. When it was first performed, however, at the Vauxhall Pavilion in Pavlovsk Park near St Petersburg – where Johann II directed several seasons of summer concerts in the 1850s and 1860s – it was called In the Pavlovsk Woods. Astute businessman though he was, the composer might have been better advised to go for neutrality in this case and give it the title it has since acquired in English-speaking countries. It would at least have acknowledged the vital role played by the virtuoso musician who makes no fewer than eight entries in each of the four main sections and five more in the coda.

Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)

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, some with their own introductory bars. 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, doesn’t 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.