Im Krapfenwand'l (Cuckoo) Polka

Im Krapfenwald’l (Cuckoo): Polka française, Op.336

Since it is named after Josef Krapf’s well known tavern in the Vienna woods, it would be reasonable to assume that Im Krapfenwand’l is another tribute to the countryside the Viennese knew best. When it was first performed, however, at the Vauxhall Pavilion in Pavlovsk Park near St Petersburg - where Johann II directed several seasons of summer concerts in the 1850s and 1860s - it was called In the Pavlovsk Woods. Astute businessman though he was, the composer might have been better advised to go for neutrality in this case and give it the title it has since acquired in English-speaking countries. It would at least have acknowledged the vital role played by the virtuoso musician who makes no fewer than eight entries in each of the four main sections and five more in the coda.

Johann Strauss II

Egyptischer Marsch (Egyptian March) Op.335

Im Krapfenwald’l (Cuckoo) Polka française, Op.336

Pepetuum mobile, Op.257

Champagner (Champagne) Polka, Op.211

One of the least likely of Johann II’s many enterprises was the seasons of summer concerts - ten of them between 1856 and 1865, two more in 1869 and 1886 - which he conducted in the Vauxhall Pavilion in Pavlovsk Park near St Petersburg. After the conclusion of a favourable deal with the Tsarskoye-Selo Railway Company, which wanted to publicise its line between St Petersburg and Pavlovsk, he made a small fortune, the Russian audience had the privilege of being the first to hear such favourite pieces as the Tritsch-Tratsch and Pizzicato Polkas, and music by an unknown composer called Tchaikovsky was performed for the first time in public.

The Pavlovsk public clearly had a taste for special effects, since the Egyptian March, the Cuckoo and Champagne Polkas were all first performed in the Vauxhall Pavilion. The Egyptian March, written to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, is a wonderfully weird confection, coloured not only by exotic harmonies and percussion sounds but also some curious vocalisation. Whether it was in gratitude for this dubious tribute that Ismail Pasha sent Strauss two giraffes, on the occasion of the composer’s Golden Jubilee in 1890, history does not record. Written at about the same time and known in Russia as In Pavlovsk Woods and in Vienna by the more local title of Im Krapfenwald’l, the Cuckoo Polka features not one but, as we hear in the middle section and at the end, two or three avian creatures. The somewhat less imaginative Champagne Polka, written more than ten years earlier, is dependent on one extravagant effect repeated several times over. As for the Perpetuum mobile, if any work could be said to sum up the Strauss genius in less time than it takes to cook and egg, it is this non-stop flow of melodic invention, instrumental inspiration, and unpretentious wit.