New Year's Concert 2019 Booklet Text

歌曲 New Year's Concert 2019 Booklet Text
歌手 Christian Thielemann
歌手 Wiener Philharmoniker
歌手 Zachary Crystal
专辑 New Year's Concert 2019 Booklet Text

歌词

[00:00.000] 作曲 : Not Applicable
[00:00.365] The Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concert is being
[00:03.308] conducted for the first time by Christian Thielemann in 2019.
[00:07.524] Thielemann has been closely associated with the orchestra since
[00:11.206] 2000 and has distinguished
[00:13.204] himself in music by the Strauβ family at least since 2008,
[00:17.253] when he opened that year's Philharmonic Ball.
[00:20.324] This year's programme begins with a march by Carl Michael
[00:23.612] Ziehrer dedicated to -
[00:25.300] and named after - Anton von Schönfeld,who was General of
[00:29.189] the Artillery and General Inspector of Troops
[00:31.876] in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.As music director of the
[00:35.357] Fourth Imperial and Royal Infantry Regiment -
[00:38.212] also known as the Hoch- und Deutschmeister - Ziehrer
[00:41.548] was one of those military bandmasters
[00:43.740] who additionally wrote music in the final decades
[00:46.220] of the Habsburg monarchy,
[00:48.285] in which capacity he also gave public concertswith
[00:50.997] his orchestra.
[00:53.037] Josef Strauβ wrote his waltz Transactionen
[00:56.356] (Transactions)in the summer of 1865
[00:59.756] for a benefit concert in the Imperial and
[01:02.172] Royal People's Park in Vienna,
[01:04.172] after which he left for an urgently needed holiday.
[01:07.020] Its title harks back to his Action Waltz from
[01:10.974] the previous Carnival.
[01:12.117] In 2019 the title Transactions is also a
[01:15.806] suitable motto for the
[01:17.629] 150th anniversary of the resumption of
[01:20.308] diplomatic relations between Austria and Japan.
[01:23.636] When the Meiji dynasty came to power in Japan in
[01:27.629] 1868,it ended the country's traditional isolation and
[01:31.644] introduced a far-reaching programme of reforms at
[01:34.708] home.A prominent role in this process was played
[01:37.908] by the introduction of western music,which
[01:40.470] primarily meant German and Austrian music.
[01:43.196] The first Austrian soloists appeared in Japan,
[01:46.197] and in 1888,on the recommendation of
[01:48.932] Vienna's Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde,
[01:52.804] Bruckner's pupil Rudolf Dittrich was named
[01:54.708] director of the newly founded State Academy
[01:57.452] of Music in Tokyo.Three years later
[02:00.372] the first Japanese student - Nobu Koda -
[02:03.133] enrolled at the Gesellschaft's Conservatory.
[02:06.716] The Vienna Philharmonic first went on tour to
[02:09.292] Japan in 1956 under Paul Hindemith
[02:12.236] and since then has visited the country no
[02:15.164] fewer than thirty-six times,enjoying
[02:17.413] a degree of popularity with local audiences
[02:20.037] that can only be expressed in superlatives.
[02:22.957] Transactionen was even heard in Japan in 1983
[02:24.661] and 1986.since 1978 the New Year's Concert
[02:31.652] has been broadcast in Japan,making it an integral
[02:34.724] part of Austro-Janpenese musical relations.Strangely
[02:38.965] enough,it was on 19
[02:40.100] May That the Japenese broadcaster NHK first showed a
[02:44.756] New Year's Concert from Vienna.
[02:47.164] Mono broadcasts on 1 January began in 1984,and since
[02:51.740] 1987 the concerts have been relayed live in stereo on
[02:55.445] both television and radio.
[03:01.060] It was Josef Hellmesberger(II)who was instrumental in
[03:04.580] ensuring Dittrich's appointment in Japan.
[03:06.572] "Peipi"Hellmesverger held a variety of posts in the
[03:09.900] musical life of Vienna:as
[03:11.700] solo violinist in the Court Opera Orchestra and with
[03:14.821] the Vienna Philharmonic,Court Kapellmeister,
[03:17.692] Mahler's successor as conductor of the Philharmonic's
[03:21.262] subscription concerts,and professor
[03:24.028] of violin at the Gesellschaft's Conservatory.During his
[03:27.348] period of military service he had also been the concert-master
[03:31.100] of the
[03:31.388] Hoch- und Deutschmeister regiment.His gossamer-light
[03:34.622] Elfenreigen(Elfin Dance)was written in 1903
[03:39.534] within the context of his work at the Court Opera.
[03:42.012] Johann Strauβ's polka schnell Expreβ was written in
[03:47.012] the wake of the
[03:47.988] Austro-Prussian War of 1866,a war lost with remarkble
[03:52.942] speed by the Austrian army,
[03:54.812] but no one listening to this piece would guess its
[03:57.308] bellicose background.In the aftermath of the war,
[04:00.348] the Strauβ brothers launched their Biennese season
[04:03.212] only in the late autumn.First performed in the People's Garden,
[04:07.125] the Expreβ polka strikes a demonstratively carefree note.
[04:11.300] In the late 1870s Strauβ,recently remarried,spent his
[04:17.870] summer vacations on the North Frisian
[04:20.900] island of Föhr,where the couple were treated as celevrities.
[04:24.661] Husum's mayor,for example,insisted
[04:27.564] on writing a poem in honour of Strauβ's new wife,Angelika.
[04:31.244] Their 1879 visit to the island found
[04:33.964] expression in the elaborate tone-painterly walyz
[04:37.140] Nordseebilder(Pictures of the North Sea)that was
[04:40.917] premiered by Eduard Strauβ in Vienna's Musikvereinssaal
[04:44.181] the following autumn.Curiosly enough,the title-page
[04:47.668] of the printed edition does not depict a low-lying
[04:50.300] beach lapped by the waves of the North Sea
[04:53.324] as suggested by the introduction and first waltz
[04:55.908] theme but a gloomy fjord of a kind that
[04:58.829] the widely travelled Strauβ never saw.The great
[05:02.781] Austro-Hungarian expedition to the North Pole -
[05:06.140] rather than the North Sea - had taken place only
[05:08.460] a few years earlier,resulting not least in the
[05:12.366] Arctic archipelago being named Franz Josef Land,
[05:15.868] a name that it retains to this day.
[05:18.606] Eduard Struaβ's polka schnell Mit Extrapost
[05:22.108] (Post-Haste)dates from the final phase
[05:26.364] of the Strauβ Orchestra's existence and refers
[05:28.420] to what was then the fastest form of horse-drawn
[05:31.868] transport.But by the date of its first performance
[05:35.157] in 1887 this form of transport was already
[05:38.948] becoming an anachronism.For decades relatively
[05:42.780] lengthy sections of a journey could be covered
[05:45.068] more quickly and more comfortable by rail,a mode of
[05:48.660] transport that the Strauβ brothers used extensively,
[05:51.708] while in 1888 Bertha Benz
[05:54.861] ushered in the age of the automobile with her
[05:57.164] exhibition ride fom Mannheim to Pforzheim.
[06:00.916] By the time that Johann Struaβ's operetta Der
[06:03.532] Zigeunerbaron(The Gypsy Baron)was first
[06:06.132] performed at Vienna's Theater an der Wien in 1885,
[06:10.244] it could look back on a lengthy genesis,
[06:13.364] having begun life as a Hungarian comic opera before
[06:16.812] finally mutating into an operetta set in the
[06:19.796] region between the multiethnic border area of the
[06:23.084] Banat of Temeswar and Vienna.Both of these worlds
[06:27.076] can already be identified in the potpourri overture:
[06:30.365] on the one hand we have constrastive minor-key
[06:33.572] tonalities,syncopations and the sounds of the cimbalo,
[06:37.300] and on the other the waltz
[06:39.844] "Nach dem schönen Wien/Zieht mich Herz und Sinn"
[06:42.876] (Heart and mind draw me to beautiful Bienna),
[06:45.806] which revels in string sonorities and major-key
[06:49.053] tonalities.The action unfolds against the
[06:52.172] historically inaccurate background of the War of
[06:54.772] the Austrian Succession and required an
[06:57.612] external enemy to restore unity to Austria-Hungary,
[07:01.206] which at the time of the work's first
[07:03.325] performance was already beginning to fracture in
[07:05.588] spite of the political settlemente,or Ausgleich,of 1867.
[07:10.868] Josef Strauβ's polka française Die Tänzerin
[07:15.260] (The Ballerina)was written for the New World
[07:18.068] in 1867,although in this case the New World
[07:21.933] was not the Americas but a pleasure dome with
[07:24.109] music pavilions not far from Schönbrunn Palace
[07:28.532] in the up-market district of Hietzing.
[07:31.300] Although contemporary audiences enjoyed Die
[07:33.492] Tänzerin,the work failed to maintain a place
[07:37.068] for itself in the repertory and in 2019 it is
[07:39.869] being heard for the first time at
[07:41.581] one of the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concerts.
[07:44.932] The whole of 1867 was overshadowed by Austria's
[07:47.916] defeat at the hands of the Prussians
[07:51.036] in the previous year's Seven Week's War.Many of
[07:53.900] Vienna's traditional balls had to be abandoned,
[07:56.949] but in spite of this,the Artists' Association
[07:59.389] Hesperus invited Johann Struaβ to write a
[08:02.756] particularly elegant and perhaps less boisterous
[08:05.940] waltz for its ball in the Diana Hall.
[08:08.444] Titled Künstlerleben(Artist's Life),it was premiered
[08:12.604] three days after the Blue Danube waltz.
[08:15.637] Strauβ took it with him to the World Fair in Paris in
[08:18.693] 1867,an event that provided the militarily weekend
[08:22.324] Habsburg monarchy with a
[08:23.716] welcome opportunity to return to the international
[08:26.148] stage.Strauβ's first wife,Henriette,
[08:29.556] wrote home to report on the concerts in Paris:"
[08:33.030] People here are simply mad about this Viennese music."
[08:36.692] Viennese audiences,conversely,were so spoilt by
[08:40.644] this music that Strauβ's first operatta,
[08:43.172] Indigo und die vierzig Räuber(Indigo and the Forty Thieves),
[08:47.444] encountered a relatively
[08:49.196] lukewarm response when it was premiered in February 1871,
[08:53.037] a response due above all to its libretto.
[08:55.892] By contrast,his polka schnell Die Bajadare(The Bayadè),
[09:00.324] which comprises the coda to the ballet
[09:01.262] music and motifs from the second and third acts,was
[09:04.324] greeted with great enthusiasm when it was performed
[09:07.036] for the first time at a
[09:08.381] concert with the Strauβ Orchestra under Eduard Strauβ
[09:11.125] in the People's Park in Vienna.
[09:13.596] The concert also included a scene from Meyerbeer's
[09:16.542] grand opera Les Huguenots and overture from Wagner's opera Rienzi.
[09:20.644] The world premiere of Eduard Strauβ's polka françise
[09:25.125] Opern-Soirée(Opera Soirée)in
[09:26.813] December 1877 was reported by the Wiener Zeitung:"
[09:30.404] Johann Strauβ had scarcely laid
[09:33.780] aside his baton when Eduard Strauβ appeared on the
[09:36.932] platform in order to take it up
[09:38.868] himeself.This was the sign for the ball to begin,the
[09:42.180] second and most eagerly awaited
[09:44.645] part of the programme."This first ball by the Court
[09:48.364] Opera artists in the opera house
[09:50.412] on the Ring-the building is celebrating its 150th
[09:53.828] anniversary in 2019-was the
[09:54.812] forerunner of today's Vienna Opera Ball.By imperial
[10:00.020] decree audiences were supposed
[10:02.093] to restrict themselves to listening to the music,but
[10:04.693] under Eduard Strauβ the space
[10:06.662] was abruptly cleared for dancing,with the Strauβ
[10:09.228] Orchestra replacing the Court Opera
[10:11.708] Orchestra.As a result the Vienna Philharmonic is
[10:14.892] performing the Opern-Soirée polka for
[10:17.036] the first time at its 2019 New Year's Concert.
[10:20.533] Conversely,it was the Vienna Philharmonic in its
[10:24.652] capacity as the Court Opera Orchestra
[10:26.788] that did the honours at the first performance of
[10:29.220] Johann Strauβ's Ritter Pásmán(Knight Pázmán)
[10:33.444] on 1 January 1892,when the composer himeself
[10:36.428] conducted the work.Viennese reactions to his
[10:40.740] only actual opera were among the greatest disappointments
[10:44.220] of his life.This time it was not
[10:46.516] just the banal plot to which audiences took exception -
[10:49.740] the action recolves around an
[10:51.900] extramarital kiss - but also the piece's failure to
[10:55.181] conform to expectations of what a "comic opera"should be.
[10:59.324] Among the scenes to which
[11:01.188] audiences responded more favourably was the waltz song sung
[11:04.548] by Eva - the wife of
[11:05.836] Knight Pázmán and the recipient of the harmless kiss - in Act
[11:09.412] Two.The version of the
[11:11.453] Eva Waltz that was played at a military concert only two days
[11:14.877] after the premiere of
[11:15.868] the opera itself at the Court Opera was prepared by the
[11:18.788] conductor Josef Schlar,who
[11:21.188] was Strauβ's assistant at the Court Opera but whose
[11:23.940] arrangement failed to meet with
[11:25.420] the composer's approval.
[11:28.252] If Ritter Pásmán was a flop.Strauβ's Csárdás remains
[11:31.485] one of the most popular of
[11:33.916] his compositions.This rhythmically accentuated dance
[11:37.126] derives its name from the
[11:39.076] Hungarian word for a country inn(csárda)but was widely
[11:42.540] found in the traditional
[11:43.884] music of the Roma in neighbouring countries as well.
[11:47.036] Its roots lie in the verbunkos
[11:49.317] of 18th-century taverns,where soldiers were conscripted
[11:52.492] into the Habsburg army.
[11:55.060] Whereas Hungarian elements are frequently found in
[11:59.013] Strauβ's music,his Egyptian
[12:00.356] March had little to do with Egypt,at least initially.
[12:03.916] Written at Pavlovsk near
[12:06.333] St Peterburg in the summer of 1869,it reflects the
[12:10.348] orientalism that was then in
[12:12.348] vogue.Within days of its first performance it was
[12:14.980] being repeated under the new
[12:16.622] name of the Circassian March but it soon reverted
[12:19.764] to its original title,a change
[12:21.732] presumably undertaken within the context of the
[12:23.821] sensational opening of the Suez Canal in November
[12:28.468] 1869,an event that excited international attention.
[12:33.157] In addition to his many other appointments in Vienna,
[12:36.316] Josef Hellmesberger was also
[12:38.252] active as a composer and conductor of ballets.His
[12:42.029] librettist Leopold Krenn reports
[12:45.260] that "Hellmesberger wrote music with astonishing
[12:48.276] facility,Whenever the director of the
[12:50.756] Court Opera,Wilhelm Jahn,accepted a ballet and it
[12:53.980] turned out that an additional number
[12:57.068] was needed,Hellmesberger was able to provide entire
[13:00.166] divertissements within only a
[13:02.500] couple of days."His Entr'acte Waltz must have been
[13:06.604] used on several occasions,
[13:08.324] both as ballet music and in the concert hall.It is
[13:11.637] contained in a suite of ballet
[13:13.532] numbers published in 1905,where it appears under
[13:16.934] the title Tanz auf der Spitze(Dancing en Pointe).
[13:21.236] With Johann Strauβ's polka mazur Lob der Frauen
[13:24.764] (In Praise of Women),the 2019 New Year's
[13:27.796] Concert returns to the 1867 Paris World Fair.For
[13:32.195] his guest performances Strauβ relied on
[13:35.133] the support of the Austrian ambassador,Prince
[13:37.652] Metternich,and his wife Pauline.He had also
[13:41.388] made contact with Benjamin Bilse,who had played
[13:44.028] in his father's orchestra in 1842 before
[13:47.412] running his own orchestra in Silesia and Berlin.
[13:50.893] It was from the Berlin-based
[13:52.614] Bilse'sche Kapelle that the Berlin Philharmonic
[13:55.612] emerged in 1882.In
[13:58.796] 1867 Strauβ and Bilse shared the conducting of
[14:02.180] the latter's orchestra.Among the works
[14:04.460] Strauβ performed was Lob der Frauen,which had
[14:08.389] first been heard at the Vienna Carnival earlier that same year.
[14:11.405] If the official part of Christian Thielemann's
[14:14.116] programme for his first New Year's Concert
[14:16.516] ends with Josef Strauβ's waltz Sphärenklänge
[14:19.252] (Music of the Spheres),then this makes logical
[14:21.884] sense since its introduction contals a number of
[14:25.268] reminiscences of Wagner.After all,Thieleman
[14:29.133] is only the second conductor in the history of the
[14:32.124] Bayreuth Festival to have conducted all
[14:34.109] the canonical works there.With their distant echo of
[14:37.892] Act Three of Tannhäuser,the opening bars
[14:40.964] also recall the fact that the Strauβ
[14:43.244] Orchestra was performing excerpts from Wagner's operas
[14:46.645] and music dramas at its concerts
[14:48.900] long before these works had entered the Court Opera repertory.
[14:52.020] Josef Strauβ wrote his waltz
[14:54.660] for the Medics'Ball in 1868.This circumstance is referenced
[14:59.332] in the title inasmuch as Pythagoras,
[15:01.780] the Greek philosopher who advanced the geocentric theory of
[15:05.182] concentric celestial bodies sounding
[15:07.644] together in particular mathematical relationships,was aslo a
[15:11.733] physician in the widest sense of the term.
[15:14.452] But according to a local newspaper,the Fremden-Blatt,the
[15:17.989] medically trained audience at the
[15:19.653] first performance of Josef Strauβ's Waltz heard nether
[15:22.623] Wagner nor the heavenly constellations
[15:25.300] in the opening chords but the afterlife.Yet this five-part
[15:29.892] series of waltzes soon livens up and
[15:32.764] gives us every reason to assume that the case
[15:34.693] is by no means hopeless.

拼音

[00:00.000] zuò qǔ : Not Applicable
[00:00.365] The Vienna Philharmonic' s New Year' s Concert is being
[00:03.308] conducted for the first time by Christian Thielemann in 2019.
[00:07.524] Thielemann has been closely associated with the orchestra since
[00:11.206] 2000 and has distinguished
[00:13.204] himself in music by the Strau family at least since 2008,
[00:17.253] when he opened that year' s Philharmonic Ball.
[00:20.324] This year' s programme begins with a march by Carl Michael
[00:23.612] Ziehrer dedicated to
[00:25.300] and named after Anton von Sch nfeld, who was General of
[00:29.189] the Artillery and General Inspector of Troops
[00:31.876] in the AustroHungarian Empire. As music director of the
[00:35.357] Fourth Imperial and Royal Infantry Regiment
[00:38.212] also known as the Hoch und Deutschmeister Ziehrer
[00:41.548] was one of those military bandmasters
[00:43.740] who additionally wrote music in the final decades
[00:46.220] of the Habsburg monarchy,
[00:48.285] in which capacity he also gave public concertswith
[00:50.997] his orchestra.
[00:53.037] Josef Strau wrote his waltz Transactionen
[00:56.356] Transactions in the summer of 1865
[00:59.756] for a benefit concert in the Imperial and
[01:02.172] Royal People' s Park in Vienna,
[01:04.172] after which he left for an urgently needed holiday.
[01:07.020] Its title harks back to his Action Waltz from
[01:10.974] the previous Carnival.
[01:12.117] In 2019 the title Transactions is also a
[01:15.806] suitable motto for the
[01:17.629] 150th anniversary of the resumption of
[01:20.308] diplomatic relations between Austria and Japan.
[01:23.636] When the Meiji dynasty came to power in Japan in
[01:27.629] 1868, it ended the country' s traditional isolation and
[01:31.644] introduced a farreaching programme of reforms at
[01:34.708] home. A prominent role in this process was played
[01:37.908] by the introduction of western music, which
[01:40.470] primarily meant German and Austrian music.
[01:43.196] The first Austrian soloists appeared in Japan,
[01:46.197] and in 1888, on the recommendation of
[01:48.932] Vienna' s Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde,
[01:52.804] Bruckner' s pupil Rudolf Dittrich was named
[01:54.708] director of the newly founded State Academy
[01:57.452] of Music in Tokyo. Three years later
[02:00.372] the first Japanese student Nobu Koda
[02:03.133] enrolled at the Gesellschaft' s Conservatory.
[02:06.716] The Vienna Philharmonic first went on tour to
[02:09.292] Japan in 1956 under Paul Hindemith
[02:12.236] and since then has visited the country no
[02:15.164] fewer than thirtysix times, enjoying
[02:17.413] a degree of popularity with local audiences
[02:20.037] that can only be expressed in superlatives.
[02:22.957] Transactionen was even heard in Japan in 1983
[02:24.661] and 1986. since 1978 the New Year' s Concert
[02:31.652] has been broadcast in Japan, making it an integral
[02:34.724] part of AustroJanpenese musical relations. Strangely
[02:38.965] enough, it was on 19
[02:40.100] May That the Japenese broadcaster NHK first showed a
[02:44.756] New Year' s Concert from Vienna.
[02:47.164] Mono broadcasts on 1 January began in 1984, and since
[02:51.740] 1987 the concerts have been relayed live in stereo on
[02:55.445] both television and radio.
[03:01.060] It was Josef Hellmesberger II who was instrumental in
[03:04.580] ensuring Dittrich' s appointment in Japan.
[03:06.572] " Peipi" Hellmesverger held a variety of posts in the
[03:09.900] musical life of Vienna: as
[03:11.700] solo violinist in the Court Opera Orchestra and with
[03:14.821] the Vienna Philharmonic, Court Kapellmeister,
[03:17.692] Mahler' s successor as conductor of the Philharmonic' s
[03:21.262] subscription concerts, and professor
[03:24.028] of violin at the Gesellschaft' s Conservatory. During his
[03:27.348] period of military service he had also been the concertmaster
[03:31.100] of the
[03:31.388] Hoch und Deutschmeister regiment. His gossamerlight
[03:34.622] Elfenreigen Elfin Dance was written in 1903
[03:39.534] within the context of his work at the Court Opera.
[03:42.012] Johann Strau' s polka schnell Expre was written in
[03:47.012] the wake of the
[03:47.988] AustroPrussian War of 1866, a war lost with remarkble
[03:52.942] speed by the Austrian army,
[03:54.812] but no one listening to this piece would guess its
[03:57.308] bellicose background. In the aftermath of the war,
[04:00.348] the Strau brothers launched their Biennese season
[04:03.212] only in the late autumn. First performed in the People' s Garden,
[04:07.125] the Expre polka strikes a demonstratively carefree note.
[04:11.300] In the late 1870s Strau, recently remarried, spent his
[04:17.870] summer vacations on the North Frisian
[04:20.900] island of F hr, where the couple were treated as celevrities.
[04:24.661] Husum' s mayor, for example, insisted
[04:27.564] on writing a poem in honour of Strau' s new wife, Angelika.
[04:31.244] Their 1879 visit to the island found
[04:33.964] expression in the elaborate tonepainterly walyz
[04:37.140] Nordseebilder Pictures of the North Sea that was
[04:40.917] premiered by Eduard Strau in Vienna' s Musikvereinssaal
[04:44.181] the following autumn. Curiosly enough, the titlepage
[04:47.668] of the printed edition does not depict a lowlying
[04:50.300] beach lapped by the waves of the North Sea
[04:53.324] as suggested by the introduction and first waltz
[04:55.908] theme but a gloomy fjord of a kind that
[04:58.829] the widely travelled Strau never saw. The great
[05:02.781] AustroHungarian expedition to the North Pole
[05:06.140] rather than the North Sea had taken place only
[05:08.460] a few years earlier, resulting not least in the
[05:12.366] Arctic archipelago being named Franz Josef Land,
[05:15.868] a name that it retains to this day.
[05:18.606] Eduard Strua' s polka schnell Mit Extrapost
[05:22.108] PostHaste dates from the final phase
[05:26.364] of the Strau Orchestra' s existence and refers
[05:28.420] to what was then the fastest form of horsedrawn
[05:31.868] transport. But by the date of its first performance
[05:35.157] in 1887 this form of transport was already
[05:38.948] becoming an anachronism. For decades relatively
[05:42.780] lengthy sections of a journey could be covered
[05:45.068] more quickly and more comfortable by rail, a mode of
[05:48.660] transport that the Strau brothers used extensively,
[05:51.708] while in 1888 Bertha Benz
[05:54.861] ushered in the age of the automobile with her
[05:57.164] exhibition ride fom Mannheim to Pforzheim.
[06:00.916] By the time that Johann Strua' s operetta Der
[06:03.532] Zigeunerbaron The Gypsy Baron was first
[06:06.132] performed at Vienna' s Theater an der Wien in 1885,
[06:10.244] it could look back on a lengthy genesis,
[06:13.364] having begun life as a Hungarian comic opera before
[06:16.812] finally mutating into an operetta set in the
[06:19.796] region between the multiethnic border area of the
[06:23.084] Banat of Temeswar and Vienna. Both of these worlds
[06:27.076] can already be identified in the potpourri overture:
[06:30.365] on the one hand we have constrastive minorkey
[06:33.572] tonalities, syncopations and the sounds of the cimbalo,
[06:37.300] and on the other the waltz
[06:39.844] " Nach dem sch nen Wien Zieht mich Herz und Sinn"
[06:42.876] Heart and mind draw me to beautiful Bienna,
[06:45.806] which revels in string sonorities and majorkey
[06:49.053] tonalities. The action unfolds against the
[06:52.172] historically inaccurate background of the War of
[06:54.772] the Austrian Succession and required an
[06:57.612] external enemy to restore unity to AustriaHungary,
[07:01.206] which at the time of the work' s first
[07:03.325] performance was already beginning to fracture in
[07:05.588] spite of the political settlemente, or Ausgleich, of 1867.
[07:10.868] Josef Strau' s polka fran aise Die T nzerin
[07:15.260] The Ballerina was written for the New World
[07:18.068] in 1867, although in this case the New World
[07:21.933] was not the Americas but a pleasure dome with
[07:24.109] music pavilions not far from Sch nbrunn Palace
[07:28.532] in the upmarket district of Hietzing.
[07:31.300] Although contemporary audiences enjoyed Die
[07:33.492] T nzerin, the work failed to maintain a place
[07:37.068] for itself in the repertory and in 2019 it is
[07:39.869] being heard for the first time at
[07:41.581] one of the Vienna Philharmonic' s New Year' s Concerts.
[07:44.932] The whole of 1867 was overshadowed by Austria' s
[07:47.916] defeat at the hands of the Prussians
[07:51.036] in the previous year' s Seven Week' s War. Many of
[07:53.900] Vienna' s traditional balls had to be abandoned,
[07:56.949] but in spite of this, the Artists' Association
[07:59.389] Hesperus invited Johann Strua to write a
[08:02.756] particularly elegant and perhaps less boisterous
[08:05.940] waltz for its ball in the Diana Hall.
[08:08.444] Titled Kü nstlerleben Artist' s Life, it was premiered
[08:12.604] three days after the Blue Danube waltz.
[08:15.637] Strau took it with him to the World Fair in Paris in
[08:18.693] 1867, an event that provided the militarily weekend
[08:22.324] Habsburg monarchy with a
[08:23.716] welcome opportunity to return to the international
[08:26.148] stage. Strau' s first wife, Henriette,
[08:29.556] wrote home to report on the concerts in Paris:"
[08:33.030] People here are simply mad about this Viennese music."
[08:36.692] Viennese audiences, conversely, were so spoilt by
[08:40.644] this music that Strau' s first operatta,
[08:43.172] Indigo und die vierzig R uber Indigo and the Forty Thieves,
[08:47.444] encountered a relatively
[08:49.196] lukewarm response when it was premiered in February 1871,
[08:53.037] a response due above all to its libretto.
[08:55.892] By contrast, his polka schnell Die Bajadare The Bayadè,
[09:00.324] which comprises the coda to the ballet
[09:01.262] music and motifs from the second and third acts, was
[09:04.324] greeted with great enthusiasm when it was performed
[09:07.036] for the first time at a
[09:08.381] concert with the Strau Orchestra under Eduard Strau
[09:11.125] in the People' s Park in Vienna.
[09:13.596] The concert also included a scene from Meyerbeer' s
[09:16.542] grand opera Les Huguenots and overture from Wagner' s opera Rienzi.
[09:20.644] The world premiere of Eduard Strau' s polka fran ise
[09:25.125] OpernSoiré e Opera Soiré e in
[09:26.813] December 1877 was reported by the Wiener Zeitung:"
[09:30.404] Johann Strau had scarcely laid
[09:33.780] aside his baton when Eduard Strau appeared on the
[09:36.932] platform in order to take it up
[09:38.868] himeself. This was the sign for the ball to begin, the
[09:42.180] second and most eagerly awaited
[09:44.645] part of the programme." This first ball by the Court
[09:48.364] Opera artists in the opera house
[09:50.412] on the Ringthe building is celebrating its 150th
[09:53.828] anniversary in 2019was the
[09:54.812] forerunner of today' s Vienna Opera Ball. By imperial
[10:00.020] decree audiences were supposed
[10:02.093] to restrict themselves to listening to the music, but
[10:04.693] under Eduard Strau the space
[10:06.662] was abruptly cleared for dancing, with the Strau
[10:09.228] Orchestra replacing the Court Opera
[10:11.708] Orchestra. As a result the Vienna Philharmonic is
[10:14.892] performing the OpernSoiré e polka for
[10:17.036] the first time at its 2019 New Year' s Concert.
[10:20.533] Conversely, it was the Vienna Philharmonic in its
[10:24.652] capacity as the Court Opera Orchestra
[10:26.788] that did the honours at the first performance of
[10:29.220] Johann Strau' s Ritter Pá smá n Knight Pá zmá n
[10:33.444] on 1 January 1892, when the composer himeself
[10:36.428] conducted the work. Viennese reactions to his
[10:40.740] only actual opera were among the greatest disappointments
[10:44.220] of his life. This time it was not
[10:46.516] just the banal plot to which audiences took exception
[10:49.740] the action recolves around an
[10:51.900] extramarital kiss but also the piece' s failure to
[10:55.181] conform to expectations of what a " comic opera" should be.
[10:59.324] Among the scenes to which
[11:01.188] audiences responded more favourably was the waltz song sung
[11:04.548] by Eva the wife of
[11:05.836] Knight Pá zmá n and the recipient of the harmless kiss in Act
[11:09.412] Two. The version of the
[11:11.453] Eva Waltz that was played at a military concert only two days
[11:14.877] after the premiere of
[11:15.868] the opera itself at the Court Opera was prepared by the
[11:18.788] conductor Josef Schlar, who
[11:21.188] was Strau' s assistant at the Court Opera but whose
[11:23.940] arrangement failed to meet with
[11:25.420] the composer' s approval.
[11:28.252] If Ritter Pá smá n was a flop. Strau' s Csá rdá s remains
[11:31.485] one of the most popular of
[11:33.916] his compositions. This rhythmically accentuated dance
[11:37.126] derives its name from the
[11:39.076] Hungarian word for a country inn csá rda but was widely
[11:42.540] found in the traditional
[11:43.884] music of the Roma in neighbouring countries as well.
[11:47.036] Its roots lie in the verbunkos
[11:49.317] of 18thcentury taverns, where soldiers were conscripted
[11:52.492] into the Habsburg army.
[11:55.060] Whereas Hungarian elements are frequently found in
[11:59.013] Strau' s music, his Egyptian
[12:00.356] March had little to do with Egypt, at least initially.
[12:03.916] Written at Pavlovsk near
[12:06.333] St Peterburg in the summer of 1869, it reflects the
[12:10.348] orientalism that was then in
[12:12.348] vogue. Within days of its first performance it was
[12:14.980] being repeated under the new
[12:16.622] name of the Circassian March but it soon reverted
[12:19.764] to its original title, a change
[12:21.732] presumably undertaken within the context of the
[12:23.821] sensational opening of the Suez Canal in November
[12:28.468] 1869, an event that excited international attention.
[12:33.157] In addition to his many other appointments in Vienna,
[12:36.316] Josef Hellmesberger was also
[12:38.252] active as a composer and conductor of ballets. His
[12:42.029] librettist Leopold Krenn reports
[12:45.260] that " Hellmesberger wrote music with astonishing
[12:48.276] facility, Whenever the director of the
[12:50.756] Court Opera, Wilhelm Jahn, accepted a ballet and it
[12:53.980] turned out that an additional number
[12:57.068] was needed, Hellmesberger was able to provide entire
[13:00.166] divertissements within only a
[13:02.500] couple of days." His Entr' acte Waltz must have been
[13:06.604] used on several occasions,
[13:08.324] both as ballet music and in the concert hall. It is
[13:11.637] contained in a suite of ballet
[13:13.532] numbers published in 1905, where it appears under
[13:16.934] the title Tanz auf der Spitze Dancing en Pointe.
[13:21.236] With Johann Strau' s polka mazur Lob der Frauen
[13:24.764] In Praise of Women, the 2019 New Year' s
[13:27.796] Concert returns to the 1867 Paris World Fair. For
[13:32.195] his guest performances Strau relied on
[13:35.133] the support of the Austrian ambassador, Prince
[13:37.652] Metternich, and his wife Pauline. He had also
[13:41.388] made contact with Benjamin Bilse, who had played
[13:44.028] in his father' s orchestra in 1842 before
[13:47.412] running his own orchestra in Silesia and Berlin.
[13:50.893] It was from the Berlinbased
[13:52.614] Bilse' sche Kapelle that the Berlin Philharmonic
[13:55.612] emerged in 1882. In
[13:58.796] 1867 Strau and Bilse shared the conducting of
[14:02.180] the latter' s orchestra. Among the works
[14:04.460] Strau performed was Lob der Frauen, which had
[14:08.389] first been heard at the Vienna Carnival earlier that same year.
[14:11.405] If the official part of Christian Thielemann' s
[14:14.116] programme for his first New Year' s Concert
[14:16.516] ends with Josef Strau' s waltz Sph renkl nge
[14:19.252] Music of the Spheres, then this makes logical
[14:21.884] sense since its introduction contals a number of
[14:25.268] reminiscences of Wagner. After all, Thieleman
[14:29.133] is only the second conductor in the history of the
[14:32.124] Bayreuth Festival to have conducted all
[14:34.109] the canonical works there. With their distant echo of
[14:37.892] Act Three of Tannh user, the opening bars
[14:40.964] also recall the fact that the Strau
[14:43.244] Orchestra was performing excerpts from Wagner' s operas
[14:46.645] and music dramas at its concerts
[14:48.900] long before these works had entered the Court Opera repertory.
[14:52.020] Josef Strau wrote his waltz
[14:54.660] for the Medics' Ball in 1868. This circumstance is referenced
[14:59.332] in the title inasmuch as Pythagoras,
[15:01.780] the Greek philosopher who advanced the geocentric theory of
[15:05.182] concentric celestial bodies sounding
[15:07.644] together in particular mathematical relationships, was aslo a
[15:11.733] physician in the widest sense of the term.
[15:14.452] But according to a local newspaper, the FremdenBlatt, the
[15:17.989] medically trained audience at the
[15:19.653] first performance of Josef Strau' s Waltz heard nether
[15:22.623] Wagner nor the heavenly constellations
[15:25.300] in the opening chords but the afterlife. Yet this fivepart
[15:29.892] series of waltzes soon livens up and
[15:32.764] gives us every reason to assume that the case
[15:34.693] is by no means hopeless.