Donausagen (Danube Legends): Waltz

Johann Strauss’s An der schönen blauen Donau – or “The Blue Danube” as it is familiarly known in this country – is not the only waltz composer’s tribute to the actually rather grey River Danube. Julius Fucik’s Danube Legends was no doubt written, like many of the items in this programme, in full awareness of the Strauss precedent. That however did not mean that it emerged as a mere imitation. Having studied with Dvorák at the Prague Conservatoire, Fucik was too good a composer to make that mistake. While he was wise enough to turn to Strauss for the structural model, creating not just a one-tune waltz but a whole carefully organised medley of tunes, he retained his own sound and his own melodic style.

Opening with a slow non-waltz-time introduction evocative of the surrounding countryside, Danube Legends offers an early anticipation – just three notes on oboe echoed by trumpet and then extended by other wind instruments – of the melody that will later takes is place as the main theme of the work. Another attractive aspect of the introduction is an evocative little episode for horns reminiscent perhaps of Smetana’s Ma Vlast. Approached by an acceleration and an elaborately engineered climax, the main section begins with the tune we have met already but now in full colour on strings and wind with regularly rhythmic percussion accompaniment. Several other tunes intervene but it is the main theme that is recalled at the climax of the piece, to be followed by a memory of the horn episode and a brief but plainly conclusive assertion of the all-important three-note motif.

What pity that the one work by Fucik that everyone knows is not Danube Legends but the self-parodistic Entry of the Gladiators!