Davis stuff

Johann Strauss II

Cuckoo Polka, Op.336

Perpetuum mobile, Op.257

The Strauss family needed inexhaustible supplies not only of good tunes but also of witty ideas - the tunes being mainly for the waltzes, the witty ideas mainly for the polkas. This is not to say that there is never anything amusing in the waltzes or that there are no good tunes in the polkas. On the contrary. But the fact is that, whereas the Viennese waltz as developed by the Struass family required and encouraged extended melodies, the polka, usually a high-energy dance lasting no more than a few minutes, did not. So composers of polkas had to think of other ways of intriguing the ear - even in a comparatively slow “polka française” like Im Krapfenwand’l named after Josef Krapf’s famous tavern in the Vienna woods and known in this country as the Cuckoo Polka. The English title does at least acknowledge the vital role played by the virtuoso musician who makes no fewer than eight prominent entries in each of the four main sections and five more in the coda.

If anything could be said to sum up the Strauss genius in less time than it takes to cook an egg, it is the non-stop flow of melodic invention, instrumental inspiration, and unpretentious wit of Perpetuum mobile. It was inspired by a press comment on a remarkable evening when the Strauss brothers each conducted one of three balls going on simultaneously in the same hall in Vienna in 1861. “Perpetual motion, or the dance without an end,” one paper called it, and that is exactly what Johann Strauss contrived to achieve in a quick polka written for a different ballroom a couple of months later. There being, theoretically, no reason why it should ever stop, it is up to the conductor to choose when to bring perpetual motion to an end.

Johann Strauss II

Auf der Jagd (At the Hunt) Polka, Op.373

Champagner Polka (Champagne Polka), Op.211

Two more Strauss polkas, both of them of the quick kind (Polka schnell) and both of them equipped with sound effects not normally heard in the concert hall. There is nothing unusual about the colourful use of horns and trumpets in Auf der Jagd (“At the Hunt”), the tune of which Strauss took from his operetta Cagliostro in Wien, but those of nervous disposition should be warned that there is more to it than that. Described by its composer as “a musical joke,“ the Champagne Polka 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.