Did you know that…

Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)

Did you know that…

… the composer of literally hundreds of waltzes and polkas - many of them among the greatest and most attractive of their kind - couldn’t dance a step himself

… Vienna’s “favourite son” renounced his Austrian citizenship in 1885 and then applied for “enrolment on the nationality register of the Dukedom of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha” - at the same time leaving the Roman Catholic Church and becoming a Lutheran Protestant - to get round the Austrian divorce laws and marry his third wife Adèle

… the Strauss orchestra did much to familiarise the Viennese public with the music of Richard Wagner by performing, among the Strauss waltzes and polkas, orchestral selections from his operas years before their first Viennese stage productions - and even, in the case of Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, before their first production anywhere

… Wagner regarded Johann II as “the most musical brain of the age”

… when Johann II conducted Tchaikovsky’s Characteristic Dances in one of the Strauss seasons in Pavlosk Park near St Petersburg in 1865 it was the first time that anything by the Russian composer had been heard in public

… below a quotation from the Blue Danube on a fan once belonging to Adèle Strauss arethe words “unfortunately not by Johannes Brahms” written in Brahms’s distinctive hand

… other heavy-weight admirers included Liszt, Bruckner and Richard Strauss

… a poll conducted in 1890 to find the most popular European personalities put Johann II in third place, behind only Queen Victoria and Prince Otto von Bismarck

… Johann II left the major part of his estate - estimated at well over £1M by today’s standards - to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, the historic organisation that now runs concerts at the Vienna Musikverein

… in 1907 Eduard, by then the sole survivor of the three Strauss brothers, destroyed the whole of the family archive by having several wagon-loads of manuscripts incinerated - for which sad act of vandalism he claimed to have had the late Johann II’s agreement