Ballet Music No.2 from Rosamunde D797

In December 1823 the Theater an der Wien, the Viennese theatre where where Johann Strauss II was to enjoy many of his operetta successes, was the scene of a disaster. Helmina von Chézy’s play Rosamunde Fürstin von Cypern was so badly received that it was taken off after only two performances – much to the disappointment of Franz Schubert who had written nine pieces of incidental music for it and who had received far more praise for his work than the “terrible Frau von Chézy” for hers. However, while the play has disappeared from view, the incidental music, which contains some of Schubert’s best tunes, lives on. The last item in the score, the second of two ballet episodes, includes three or four of those tunes, all of them worked into an attractively symmetrical pattern and delightfully scored for a small orchestra of strings, woodwind in pairs and a solitary horn.