Suppe: Pique Dame Overture (Queen of Spades - Die Kartenschlagerin)

Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo, Cavaliere Suppé-Demelli, or as he is more commonly known today, Franz von Suppé, was born in Spalato (Split), then part of the Austrian Empire, to parents of Italian / Belgian and Austrian descent. Although discouraged from a musical career from an early age, Suppé received encouragement from a distant yet illustrious relative, the great Italian opera composer Donizetti. By the 1840s Suppé had carved for himself a successful niche as a composer for the stage, and over the four decades that followed there was rarely a year without a new stage work from him.

Although the bulk of his operas and operettas have sunk into relative obscurity, his bright and colourful overtures have survived. Suppé was often referred to as ‘the Viennese Offenbach’, and in fact he was responsible for introducing many of Offenbach’s operettas to the Austrian capital. The Beautiful Galatea was among his first efforts in the style of Offenbach, Suppé here taking on the French composer’s La Belle Hélène.

Also on this disc are the overtures to Poet and Peasant, perhaps Suppé’s most familiar, and Boccaccio which is widely regarded as Suppé’s finest work for the stage, based very loosely on the life of Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 – 1375), the Florentine author of the Decameron.

It would seem that wars and musical comedy often go hand in hand, perhaps partly for the purpose of deflating military pomposity. Several of Suppé’s operettas are in this vein, including Light Cavalry, The Jolly Robbers, Isabella, and, a major success, Fatinitza, all of which feature military plots in some form.

Last, but not least, this disc features Suppé’s overtures to A Morning, Noon, and Night in Vienna, The Queen of Spades, Donna Juanita, and The Model, several operatic marches, the concert march Up Hill and Down Dale, and the Humorous Variations on the beloved Student Song ‘Who comes from afar?’.

The works are performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Neeme Järvi, who in 2012 celebrated his thirty-year recording career with Chandos Records.

Just in time for the New Year festivities, we have a New Year Gala Concert of the music that the Viennese play best. The concert includes favourites such as Strauss’ Radetsky March, On the Beautiful Blue Danube and Emperor Waltz, as well as Lumbye’s Champagne Galop.

Recording producers: John Culshaw (La Princesse Jaune, Benvenuto Cellini, Si j’étais roi, Zampa, Donna Diana, Pique Dame, Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor, Le Domino noir); Victor Olof (Masaniello, Le cheval de bronze, Fra diavolo, Les diamants de la couronne); James Walker (Le Corsaire, Le roi Lear, Le Carnaval Romain, Les francs-juges)

Recording engineers: Kenneth Wilkinson (La Princesse Jaune, Benvenuto Cellini) James Brown (Masaniello, Le cheval de bronze, Fra diavolo, Les diamants de la couronne); Roy Wallace (Le Corsaire, Le roi Lear, Le Carnaval Romain, Les francs-juges); Ken Cress (Si j’étais roi, Zampa, Donna Diana, Pique Dame, Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor, Le Domino noir)

Recording location: La Maison de la Mutualité, Paris, France, June 1951 (La Princesse Jaune, Benvenuto Cellini), September 1954 (Masaniello, Le cheval de bronze, Fra diavolo, Les diamants de la couronne), June 1955 (Le Corsaire, Le roi Lear, Le Carnaval Romain, Les francs-juges), November 1957 (Si j’étais roi, Zampa, Donna Diana, Pique Dame, Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor, Le Domino noir)

The recorded legacy of Albert Wolff is one of the most sought-after by collectors. Of Dutch parentage, but born in Paris, Wolff was something of a polymath: pianist, organist, conductor, composer, and had a long career in recording studios beginning in 1920. His first recordings for Decca, starting in the summer of 1951, were a complete Carmen (with Suzanne Juyol), a Manon (with Janine Micheau) as well as several French orchestral suites and individual pieces. ‘Overtures in Hi-Fi’ was the title given to a now ‘cult’ LP of Wolff conducting six overtures: Si j’étais roi, Le Domino Noir, Zampa, Donna Diana, Pique Dame and The Merry Wives of Windsor. To these are added a further ten overtures to make up this 2CD anthology.

Just in time for the New Year festivities, we have a New Year Gala Concert of the music that the Viennese play best. The concert includes favourites such as Strauss’ Radetsky March, On the Beautiful Blue Danube and Emperor Waltz, as well as Lumbye’s Champagne Galop.

In the Free Trade Hall, at Belle Vue and in the Royal Albert Hall the Viennese Nights were occasions which gave intense musical pleasure and also had a remarkable atmosphere of bonhomie. Sir John could relax, but he never relaxed his artistic standards and he treated the waltzes and polkas as masterpieces of their kind which demanded and deserved top rank treatment. His recording sessions on 30 and 31 December 1966 included Johann Strauss II’s Blue Danube waltz, Perpetuum mobile and Gypsy Baron overture and Johann Strauss I’s Radetzky March in Gordon Jacob’s orchestration. To these are added Strauss II’s cork-popping Champagne Polka and the Thunder and Lightning Polka. No Barbirolli Viennese evening would be complete, of course, without Lehár’s Gold and Silver waltz (1902), performed with especial sumptuousness.

From the 1957 Pye sessions come six items by Franz von Suppé, the Austrian composer and conductor of Belgian descent who sealed in Vienna in 1835 where five years later he became third conductor at the Theater in der Josefstadt. In 10 years there, he wrote over twenty scores, including Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna, in which he proved himself in the line of Johann Strauss I. He moved to the Theater an der Wien in 1845 as one of its chief conductors for the next 17 years, after which he went to Kaitheater in 1862 and the Carltheater in 1865 where he remained until his retirement in 1882. His Queen of Spades overture was for a one-act comic operetta, first staged in Berlin, and The Jolly Robbers (Banditenstreiche) for yet another in 1867. Perhaps his best-known and most popular pieces are the Light Cavalry overture and the Poet and Peasant overture. Of all his stage works, only Boccaccio is seen with any regularity today, although he was regarded in his lifetime as Vienna’s answer to Offenbach. But the overtures survive and are ideal Barbirolli Viennese material.

The other Strauss in this album is the German, Richard. He is represented by Barbirolli’s suite of waltzes from his most popular opera Der Rosenkavalier which Barbirolli often conducted with the Covent Garden touring company in the 1930s. Sir John never conducted this particular compilation in the concert-hall although he often conducted a suite, probably arranged by Artur Rodzinski, which includes the Presentation of the Rose and the trio in orchestral disguise and can be heard on ‘Barbirolli at the Opera’ (SJB1004). It is interesting to note that Strauss himself made only arrangements of the waltzes for concert performance. Barbirolli recorded this rarity of his own in the December 1966 sessions for Columbia Studio 2. Sir John made two recordings of Schubert’s Great C major Symphony, the first in December 1953 (Barbirolli Society SJB1020) and the second (issued here) in June 1964, also for HMV.