歌词
The Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concert is being
conducted for the first time by Christian Thielemann in 2019.
Thielemann has been closely associated with the orchestra since
2000 and has distinguished
himself in music by the Strauβ family at least since 2008,
when he opened that year's Philharmonic Ball.
This year's programme begins with a march by Carl Michael
Ziehrer dedicated to -
and named after - Anton von Schönfeld,who was General of
the Artillery and General Inspector of Troops
in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.As music director of the
Fourth Imperial and Royal Infantry Regiment -
also known as the Hoch- und Deutschmeister - Ziehrer
was one of those military bandmasters
who additionally wrote music in the final decades
of the Habsburg monarchy,
in which capacity he also gave public concertswith
his orchestra.
Josef Strauβ wrote his waltz Transactionen
(Transactions)in the summer of 1865
for a benefit concert in the Imperial and
Royal People's Park in Vienna,
after which he left for an urgently needed holiday.
Its title harks back to his Action Waltz from
the previous Carnival.
In 2019 the title Transactions is also a
suitable motto for the
150th anniversary of the resumption of
diplomatic relations between Austria and Japan.
When the Meiji dynasty came to power in Japan in
1868,it ended the country's traditional isolation and
introduced a far-reaching programme of reforms at
home.A prominent role in this process was played
by the introduction of western music,which
primarily meant German and Austrian music.
The first Austrian soloists appeared in Japan,
and in 1888,on the recommendation of
Vienna's Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde,
Bruckner's pupil Rudolf Dittrich was named
director of the newly founded State Academy
of Music in Tokyo.Three years later
the first Japanese student - Nobu Koda -
enrolled at the Gesellschaft's Conservatory.
The Vienna Philharmonic first went on tour to
Japan in 1956 under Paul Hindemith
and since then has visited the country no
fewer than thirty-six times,enjoying
a degree of popularity with local audiences
that can only be expressed in superlatives.
Transactionen was even heard in Japan in 1983
and 1986.since 1978 the New Year's Concert
has been broadcast in Japan,making it an integral
part of Austro-Janpenese musical relations.Strangely
enough,it was on 19
May That the Japenese broadcaster NHK first showed a
New Year's Concert from Vienna.
Mono broadcasts on 1 January began in 1984,and since
1987 the concerts have been relayed live in stereo on
both television and radio.
It was Josef Hellmesberger(II)who was instrumental in
ensuring Dittrich's appointment in Japan.
"Peipi"Hellmesverger held a variety of posts in the
musical life of Vienna:as
solo violinist in the Court Opera Orchestra and with
the Vienna Philharmonic,Court Kapellmeister,
Mahler's successor as conductor of the Philharmonic's
subscription concerts,and professor
of violin at the Gesellschaft's Conservatory.During his
period of military service he had also been the concert-master
of the
Hoch- und Deutschmeister regiment.His gossamer-light
Elfenreigen(Elfin Dance)was written in 1903
within the context of his work at the Court Opera.
Johann Strauβ's polka schnell Expreβ was written in
the wake of the
Austro-Prussian War of 1866,a war lost with remarkble
speed by the Austrian army,
but no one listening to this piece would guess its
bellicose background.In the aftermath of the war,
the Strauβ brothers launched their Biennese season
only in the late autumn.First performed in the People's Garden,
the Expreβ polka strikes a demonstratively carefree note.
In the late 1870s Strauβ,recently remarried,spent his
summer vacations on the North Frisian
island of Föhr,where the couple were treated as celevrities.
Husum's mayor,for example,insisted
on writing a poem in honour of Strauβ's new wife,Angelika.
Their 1879 visit to the island found
expression in the elaborate tone-painterly walyz
Nordseebilder(Pictures of the North Sea)that was
premiered by Eduard Strauβ in Vienna's Musikvereinssaal
the following autumn.Curiosly enough,the title-page
of the printed edition does not depict a low-lying
beach lapped by the waves of the North Sea
as suggested by the introduction and first waltz
theme but a gloomy fjord of a kind that
the widely travelled Strauβ never saw.The great
Austro-Hungarian expedition to the North Pole -
rather than the North Sea - had taken place only
a few years earlier,resulting not least in the
Arctic archipelago being named Franz Josef Land,
a name that it retains to this day.
Eduard Struaβ's polka schnell Mit Extrapost
(Post-Haste)dates from the final phase
of the Strauβ Orchestra's existence and refers
to what was then the fastest form of horse-drawn
transport.But by the date of its first performance
in 1887 this form of transport was already
becoming an anachronism.For decades relatively
lengthy sections of a journey could be covered
more quickly and more comfortable by rail,a mode of
transport that the Strauβ brothers used extensively,
while in 1888 Bertha Benz
ushered in the age of the automobile with her
exhibition ride fom Mannheim to Pforzheim.
By the time that Johann Struaβ's operetta Der
Zigeunerbaron(The Gypsy Baron)was first
performed at Vienna's Theater an der Wien in 1885,
it could look back on a lengthy genesis,
having begun life as a Hungarian comic opera before
finally mutating into an operetta set in the
region between the multiethnic border area of the
Banat of Temeswar and Vienna.Both of these worlds
can already be identified in the potpourri overture:
on the one hand we have constrastive minor-key
tonalities,syncopations and the sounds of the cimbalo,
and on the other the waltz
"Nach dem schönen Wien/Zieht mich Herz und Sinn"
(Heart and mind draw me to beautiful Bienna),
which revels in string sonorities and major-key
tonalities.The action unfolds against the
historically inaccurate background of the War of
the Austrian Succession and required an
external enemy to restore unity to Austria-Hungary,
which at the time of the work's first
performance was already beginning to fracture in
spite of the political settlemente,or Ausgleich,of 1867.
Josef Strauβ's polka française Die Tänzerin
(The Ballerina)was written for the New World
in 1867,although in this case the New World
was not the Americas but a pleasure dome with
music pavilions not far from Schönbrunn Palace
in the up-market district of Hietzing.
Although contemporary audiences enjoyed Die
Tänzerin,the work failed to maintain a place
for itself in the repertory and in 2019 it is
being heard for the first time at
one of the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concerts.
The whole of 1867 was overshadowed by Austria's
defeat at the hands of the Prussians
in the previous year's Seven Week's War.Many of
Vienna's traditional balls had to be abandoned,
but in spite of this,the Artists' Association
Hesperus invited Johann Struaβ to write a
particularly elegant and perhaps less boisterous
waltz for its ball in the Diana Hall.
Titled Künstlerleben(Artist's Life),it was premiered
three days after the Blue Danube waltz.
Strauβ took it with him to the World Fair in Paris in
1867,an event that provided the militarily weekend
Habsburg monarchy with a
welcome opportunity to return to the international
stage.Strauβ's first wife,Henriette,
wrote home to report on the concerts in Paris:"
People here are simply mad about this Viennese music."
Viennese audiences,conversely,were so spoilt by
this music that Strauβ's first operatta,
Indigo und die vierzig Räuber(Indigo and the Forty Thieves),
encountered a relatively
lukewarm response when it was premiered in February 1871,
a response due above all to its libretto.
By contrast,his polka schnell Die Bajadare(The Bayadè),
which comprises the coda to the ballet
music and motifs from the second and third acts,was
greeted with great enthusiasm when it was performed
for the first time at a
concert with the Strauβ Orchestra under Eduard Strauβ
in the People's Park in Vienna.
The concert also included a scene from Meyerbeer's
grand opera Les Huguenots and overture from Wagner's opera Rienzi.
The world premiere of Eduard Strauβ's polka françise
Opern-Soirée(Opera Soirée)in
December 1877 was reported by the Wiener Zeitung:"
Johann Strauβ had scarcely laid
aside his baton when Eduard Strauβ appeared on the
platform in order to take it up
himeself.This was the sign for the ball to begin,the
second and most eagerly awaited
part of the programme."This first ball by the Court
Opera artists in the opera house
on the Ring-the building is celebrating its 150th
anniversary in 2019-was the
forerunner of today's Vienna Opera Ball.By imperial
decree audiences were supposed
to restrict themselves to listening to the music,but
under Eduard Strauβ the space
was abruptly cleared for dancing,with the Strauβ
Orchestra replacing the Court Opera
Orchestra.As a result the Vienna Philharmonic is
performing the Opern-Soirée polka for
the first time at its 2019 New Year's Concert.
Conversely,it was the Vienna Philharmonic in its
capacity as the Court Opera Orchestra
that did the honours at the first performance of
Johann Strauβ's Ritter Pásmán(Knight Pázmán)
on 1 January 1892,when the composer himeself
conducted the work.Viennese reactions to his
only actual opera were among the greatest disappointments
of his life.This time it was not
just the banal plot to which audiences took exception -
the action recolves around an
extramarital kiss - but also the piece's failure to
conform to expectations of what a "comic opera"should be.
Among the scenes to which
audiences responded more favourably was the waltz song sung
by Eva - the wife of
Knight Pázmán and the recipient of the harmless kiss - in Act
Two.The version of the
Eva Waltz that was played at a military concert only two days
after the premiere of
the opera itself at the Court Opera was prepared by the
conductor Josef Schlar,who
was Strauβ's assistant at the Court Opera but whose
arrangement failed to meet with
the composer's approval.
If Ritter Pásmán was a flop.Strauβ's Csárdás remains
one of the most popular of
his compositions.This rhythmically accentuated dance
derives its name from the
Hungarian word for a country inn(csárda)but was widely
found in the traditional
music of the Roma in neighbouring countries as well.
Its roots lie in the verbunkos
of 18th-century taverns,where soldiers were conscripted
into the Habsburg army.
Whereas Hungarian elements are frequently found in
Strauβ's music,his Egyptian
March had little to do with Egypt,at least initially.
Written at Pavlovsk near
St Peterburg in the summer of 1869,it reflects the
orientalism that was then in
vogue.Within days of its first performance it was
being repeated under the new
name of the Circassian March but it soon reverted
to its original title,a change
presumably undertaken within the context of the
sensational opening of the Suez Canal in November
1869,an event that excited international attention.
In addition to his many other appointments in Vienna,
Josef Hellmesberger was also
active as a composer and conductor of ballets.His
librettist Leopold Krenn reports
that "Hellmesberger wrote music with astonishing
facility,Whenever the director of the
Court Opera,Wilhelm Jahn,accepted a ballet and it
turned out that an additional number
was needed,Hellmesberger was able to provide entire
divertissements within only a
couple of days."His Entr'acte Waltz must have been
used on several occasions,
both as ballet music and in the concert hall.It is
contained in a suite of ballet
numbers published in 1905,where it appears under
the title Tanz auf der Spitze(Dancing en Pointe).
With Johann Strauβ's polka mazur Lob der Frauen
(In Praise of Women),the 2019 New Year's
Concert returns to the 1867 Paris World Fair.For
his guest performances Strauβ relied on
the support of the Austrian ambassador,Prince
Metternich,and his wife Pauline.He had also
made contact with Benjamin Bilse,who had played
in his father's orchestra in 1842 before
running his own orchestra in Silesia and Berlin.
It was from the Berlin-based
Bilse'sche Kapelle that the Berlin Philharmonic
emerged in 1882.In
1867 Strauβ and Bilse shared the conducting of
the latter's orchestra.Among the works
Strauβ performed was Lob der Frauen,which had
first been heard at the Vienna Carnival earlier that same year.
If the official part of Christian Thielemann's
programme for his first New Year's Concert
ends with Josef Strauβ's waltz Sphärenklänge
(Music of the Spheres),then this makes logical
sense since its introduction contals a number of
reminiscences of Wagner.After all,Thieleman
is only the second conductor in the history of the
Bayreuth Festival to have conducted all
the canonical works there.With their distant echo of
Act Three of Tannhäuser,the opening bars
also recall the fact that the Strauβ
Orchestra was performing excerpts from Wagner's operas
and music dramas at its concerts
long before these works had entered the Court Opera repertory.
Josef Strauβ wrote his waltz
for the Medics'Ball in 1868.This circumstance is referenced
in the title inasmuch as Pythagoras,
the Greek philosopher who advanced the geocentric theory of
concentric celestial bodies sounding
together in particular mathematical relationships,was aslo a
physician in the widest sense of the term.
But according to a local newspaper,the Fremden-Blatt,the
medically trained audience at the
first performance of Josef Strauβ's Waltz heard nether
Wagner nor the heavenly constellations
in the opening chords but the afterlife.Yet this five-part
series of waltzes soon livens up and
gives us every reason to assume that the case
is by no means hopeless.
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