Banditenstreiche (Bandit Pranks): Overture

Although Johann Strauss is the hero of Viennese operetta – and in his lifetime he had no serious rival – its father figure was Franz von Suppé. It was Suppé who had the talent and the initiative to write pieces just as entertaining as the Offenbach opéras bouffes which threatened to monopolise the Viennese audience in the late 1850s, before Strauss came on the scene. If most of the dozens of operettas he wrote for the Theater an der Wien and the Carltheater are now remembered only by their overtures, it is not so much because the operettas are inferior as because the overtures are so very good. The overture to Banditenstreiche, for example, is irresistible, from its opening fanfares to the following march and, above all, the charming clarinet melody that twice stops the show – the second time just before a coda which demonstrates that if Suppé couldn’t beat Offenbach he could certainly join him.