作曲 : Not Applicable 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.
[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.
