Overture: Das Land des Lächelns (Land of Smiles)

Firmly, even rigidly rooted in tradition, the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Day concerts rarely include music by composers outside the Strauss family. In the last few years there have been pieces by Weber, who invented the concert-waltz form, Joseph Lanner, who developed the distinctively Viennese waltz style along with Johann Strauss I, and Franz von Suppé - but no Lehár, even though his Gold und Silber (Gold and Silver) is one of the most popular of all Viennese waltzes and his Die lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow) the most successful of all Viennese operettas after Die Fledermaus. Although Lehár’s popularity waned after the First World War, it was spectacularly revived in the 1920s by his association with the Austrian tenor Richard Tauber, for whom he wrote several leading roles, including that of Sou-Chong in Das Land des Lächelns (The Land of Smiles). Tauber’s voice and Lehár’s romantic vocal lines seemed to be made for each other and between them they created huge popular successes, not least Das Land des Lächelns, one number from which “Dein ist mein ganzes Herz,” (usually translated as “You are my heart’s desire”) is the most famous example of the characteristic Tauber song.

Although “Dein ist mein ganzes Herz” features prominently in the Overture, Lehár seems to prefer a Tauber song from earlier in the operetta, “Immer nur lächeln” (Always keep smiling). Certainly “Immer nur lächeln” is the melody heard at the beginning of the piece and - after a passage based on “Dein ist mein ganzes Herz” and an amusing Chinese episode from the second act - it is the melody he chooses to recall in romantic splendour at the end.