Strauss, J, II: Kaiser-Walzer, Op. 437 (Emperor Waltz)

Berlin 1950/1952

Ferenc Fricsay's love of the waltzes by Johann Strauss II exemplifies his opinion that there is no difference between ‘popular’ and ‘serious’ music but, if needs be, between good and bad music.Thanks to his own musical education and his first post as conductor of a military band in Szeged, he was very familiar with the repertoire and the musical world of 19th century Vienna.When the 34-year-old was called to post-war Berlin in order to help rebuild musical life in the western part of the destroyed city as director of the newly founded RIAS Symphony Orchestra, he passionately performed the music of Strauss from the outset.This is also documented by his ravishing recording of Die Fledermaus [see audite 23.411]. This CD presents a representative cross-section of the most beautiful and famous waltzes and polkas by Strauss recorded between 1950 and 1952, issued here for the first time. In these, not only do Fricsay's (in)famously precise rehearsal methods become perceptible but also his unique talent of improvisation, i.e. an art of interpretation where the highest degree of precision becomes completely natural, and spontaneous, music-making.

Does bankruptcy have its entertaining side? In 1921 at least, to rescue their Society for Musical Private Performances from insolvency, Alban Berg, Anton Webern, and Arnold Schönberg penned adaptations of Johann Strauss’s most popular waltzes. The benefit concert and the following auction of their scores were very successful, and while the society in the end could not be the saved, the four waltz scores have survived.

The Thomas Christian Ensemble of Vienna has now brought together these unusual arrangements for the first time on CD, together with contemporary arrangements by Manfred Trojahn and Hans-Peter Dott.

Viennese Night was a staple feature of Hallé programmes during Sir John Barbirolli’s era, not only at Belle Vue and in the Free Trade Hall but in many of the other towns and cities where the orchestra played and particularly, of course, at the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts in the Royal Albert Hall. There, especially during the 1960s, it rivalled the Last Night as a relaxed and enjoyable occasion, with JB presiding over the audience’s revels in a benevolently avuncular manner. If they were going to sway to the waltzes, they had to do it in time with the music; and if they were going to stamp their feet during some of the polkas, that too had to be done in tempo and accurately. The performances on this disc eloquently illustrate Barbirolli’s way with the music of the Strausses and others such as Lehár who comprise what we call the Golden Age of Vienna, although not all were Vienna-born but became adopted sons of the city. This English conductor of Italo-French parentage could be almost more Viennese than the Viennese. He had the secret of just how much rubato the waltzes could take without tipping over into sentimentality. He also acknowledges their rhythmic vitality and the brilliance of the scoring, not just for strings but for solo piccolo, oboe and percussion. What made his conducting of these Viennese bon-bons so satisfying was that he recognised that they were not just bon-bons but in several cases masterpieces of their genre.

The fascinating programme of waltzes and other short pieces chosen for this new recording by the chamber ensemble Diabolicus and its renowned musical director Dietrich Henschel has been given the title “A Nos Amours”, and endeavours to musically represent the full range of emotions that cover life from birth till death. There is the love of Richard Wagner for his wife Cosima and for their newborn son in the Siegfried Idyll, the love of a son for his dead mother in the Busoni’s touching lullaby, the Berceuse élégaique, as well as the joy of life and love so perfectly portrayed in the waltzes of Johann Strauss the younger. The Schubert lied Ständchen and the famous Neopolitan song Funiculì-Funiculà by Luigi Denza have been included to present the more light-hearted aspect of these “amours”. Apart from the Wagner piece, the music is here performed in transcriptions for chamber groups by Arnold Schoenberg and his circle of friends and pupils.

The chamber ensemble Diabolicus was formed in 2001 with a core of soloists from the Orchestre de Paris. The ensemble can be expanded as required, bringing together musical personalities encountered in a variety of extra-orchestral collaborations. In 2004 and 2005, Diabolicus swelled its number to thirty-five musicians for two performances at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, with Dietrich Henschel and Menahem Pressler respectively. With Dietrich Henschel, their working relationship did not involve the notion of an ensemble directed by a conductor, but was immediately established on the basis of a friendly collaboration in music.

Dietrich Henschel is acknowledged as one of today’s foremost interpreters of the lied. He is invited all over the world with the pianists Fritz Schwinghammer, Helmut Deutsch and Michael Schäfer. His substantial discography features lieder and song cycles by Mahler, Wolf, Schubert, Korngold, and Beethoven, as well as a complete recording of Busoni’s Doktor Faust (winner of a Grammy Award). His conducting career has taken flight since his triumph at the Châtelet in 2004 in a series of concerts with the ensemble Diabolicus, with which he has subsequently worked on a regular basis.

recorded in London, July 1955