NEW YEAR'S CONCERT 2010

Vienna has played a prominent role in the career of Georges Prêtre, who was born on 14 August 1924, made his Vienna Philharmonic debut in 1963 and conducted its New Year’s Concert for the first time in 2008. That’s why the 2010 New Year’s Concert opens with the Overture to Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, the “most Viennese” of all operettas, which had its premiere in 1874 at the Theater an der Wien, ran there for some forty performances and went on, via Berlin and Budapest, to conquer the stages of the whole world.

“I love you” — all orchestras with whom Georges Prêtre collaborates know that this underlies his approach to elucidating musical phrasing. In appreciation of this musical declaration of love, the first portion of our programme contains works dedicated to love by Johann and Josef Strauss. Josef, the dynasty’s subtlest and most sensitive scion, wrote the polka mazurka Frauenherz (A Woman’s Heart) for his wife Caroline, as a billet-doux intended to allay her fears about his making a proposed concert tour to Breslau. That undertaking, with which he hoped to prove to his brother Johann that he too could be a successful impresario, fell through, but his musical love letter to Caroline continues to enchant audiences today.

The polka française Im Pawlowskwalde (In the Pavlovsk Woods), which Johann Strauss composed in 1869 in St Petersburg, was presented to the Viennese public a year later with the title Im Krapfenwald’l (In Krapfenwald): Strauss’s impressions of nature in the two cities’ environs seem to have been interchangeable. Nor is any further explanation required for the bird whistles he specified in the score. Out of nature and into the ballroom: the quick polka Stürmisch in Lieb’ und Tanz (Stormy in Love and Dance), in which Johann Strauss works up themes from his operetta Das Spitzentuch der Königin (The Queen’s Lace Handkerchief) into a captivating musical miniature, serves in this live recording as a transition to Wein, Weib und Gesang (Wine,Women and Song). Just the quasi-symphonic 173-bar introduction alone would suffice to warrant special status in the master’s oeuvre for this waltz, composed in 1869 for the Vienna Men’s Choral Association. Constancy, enduring fulfilment, eternity… to conclude the first part of the concert, the oft-invoked notion of “everlasting love” is symbolised by the musical realisation of a further human dream — the Perpetuum mobile of 1861 adroitly and virtuosically proves that art can put a new perspective on the limits to which man and nature are subject.

The second half of the concert opens by paying tribute to Otto Nicolai, founder of the Vienna Philharmonic, who was born on 9 June 1810 in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) and died on 11 May 1849 in Berlin. Under his artistic and administrative leadership, members of the imperial court orchestra of the Kärntnertor Theatre gave the first Philharmonic concert on 28 March 1842. Their newly developed guidelines — attachment to the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera (as successor to the Court Opera) as well as democratic self-government and artistic, administrative and financial autonomy — have been retained up to the present day. To honour the orchestra’s founder, the Vienna Philharmonic annually presents the “Nicolai Concert”, while the players’ gratitude is also expressed at the 2010 New Year’s Concert in the performance of the Overture to his opera Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (The Merry Wives of Windsor).

The programme’s second strand is taken up by the waltz Wiener Bonbons (Vienna Bonbons). Dedicated to Princess Pauline Metternich, wife of the Austrian ambassador to France, this piece infuses the Viennese waltz tradition with Parisian flair. Following the Champagner-Polka (Champagne Polka), which Johann Strauss composed in 1858, the concert’s theme of French influence on the Strauss dynasty — and, more specifically, their friendly rivalry with Jacques Offenbach — is intensified by the polka mazurka of 1868 Ein Herz, ein Sinn (One Heart, One Mind) and its programmatically significant title. The galop Der Carneval in Paris (The Carnival in Paris) by Johann Strauss père is a Vienna Philharmonic New Year’s Concert premiere, as is the Overture to Offenbach’s opera Die Rheinnixen (The Rhine Fairies), which was first performed in 1864 at the Vienna Court Opera. Though not a lasting success, the work contained one of the best-known melodies in all of music: recycled as the Barcarolle in The Tales of Hoffmann, the fairy music from Die Rheinnixen contributed appreciably to the popularity of Offenbach’s last opera.

In spite of his disappointment with Die Rheinnixen, 1864 turned out to be a successful year for Offenbach: the premiere on 17 December of his operetta La Belle Hélène (The Beautiful Helen) was a triumph to match that of Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld) in 1858. A reliable barometer of a stage work’s success in those days was the arrangement of its most popular melodies as a quadrille for dancing. To be recognised in this fashion by the Strauss dynasty was high accolade indeed, and in this case it was the youngest member of the family, Eduard Strauss, who paid tribute to their Parisian competitor with his Helenen-Quadrille (played here for the first time in a New Year’s Concert). Shortly before his brother wrote that piece, the “Waltz King” himself had challenged Offenbach directly: Concordia (the Authors’ and Journalists’ Association of Vienna) had approached both composers to request a large-scale waltz for its annual ball on 12 January 1864. Offenbach, in town for the premiere of his Rheinnixen, produced the waltz Abendblätter (Evening Papers); Johann Strauss fils responded with his Morgenblätter (Morning Papers). Although the two works were received during the ball with the same polite applause, posterity has given Morgenblätter the clear edge in popularity.

The official programme concludes with the first performance by the Vienna Philharmonic of a work by Hans Christian Lumbye. The Danish conductor and composer, born in Copenhagen on 2 May 1810 (and thus five weeks older than Otto Nicolai), was inspired by Josef Lanner and the elder Johann Strauss, and enjoyed such great success with his orchestra on tours to Paris, St Petersburg, Berlin and Vienna that he was nicknamed the “Strauss of the North”. The most popular of his roughly seven hundred works is the Champagne Galop of 1845.

The encore portion of the 2010 New Year’s Concert is introduced by Johann Strauss’s quick polka Auf der Jagd (Off to the Hunt), based on themes from his operetta Cagliostro in Wien (Cagliostro in Vienna), after which The Blue Danube and Radetzky March assume their timehonoured place as the concert’s concluding selections.

Clemens Hellsberg
Translation Richard Evidon