For the first time ever, this year I went into the Vienna New Year's Concert armed with a listing of the program contents!

NOTE: Just so you know, last week's "post tease" has been significantly filled out and filled in. (I sure didn't know going in that along the way we'd wind up having a mini-tribute to Josef Strauss!)

If you watched this year's Vienna New Year's Concert
on PBS, you saw the musical program start like so:

FRANZ VON SUPPÉ: Overture to Poet and Peasant
On Jan. 1, in the hallowed but for obvious reasons audienceless Great Hall of Vienna's Musikverein (seen here via screen cap from the telecast), Riccardo Muti conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in Suppé's ever-inspiriting Poet and Peasant Overture. It sounded more or less like this --

Vienna Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta, cond. Sony, recorded 1989

by Ken

I say it sounded "more or less" like that, because as noted above, while what we're hearing is indeed the Vienna Philharmonic playing Poet and Peasant in the Musikverein, it isn't from New Year's Day 2021 and it isn't conducted by Maestro Muti. As noted, it's from a 1989 Sony recording of Suppé overtures -- and a lovely CD it is! -- conducted by Zubin Mehta (seen here conducting the Israel Philharmonic in 2002). Under the subject heading of "Musical Vienna," Maestro Mehta's story is by no means unrelated to Maestro Muti's. Eventually we'll want to talk about this a little.

Now, you may recall that last week's "post tease" began with a musical question:

What link is there between this celebrated Strauss
polka and the 2021 Vienna New Year's Concert?

In which the famous Strauss polka went like this:


Vienna Philharmonic, Willi Boskovsky, cond. Decca, recorded in the 1960s-70s
[At the same time, we heard performances conducted by Stanley Black, Sir John Pritchard, and Peter Guth, which again you can easily enough check out. As a matter of fact, in a moment we're going to hear yet another.]


BUT FIRST, APOLOGIES (FOR A CHANGE) FOR THE DELAY
IN BEGINNING TO CONSUMMATE LAST WEEK'S POST TEASE

Hey, stuff, you know, happens. You no doubt recall that it's been, shall we say, an eventful week, quite independent of any inconsequential individual's possible personal blockages (with their capacity to stretch out contemplated timetables to something near infinity), though come Wednesday there was undoubtedly some interactive effect, including the question of how much this business of the Vienna New Year's Concert matters.

I guess I'm thinking that, yes, it does still matter.

So, getting back to that "famous Strauss polka" --

and the naughty bit of misdirection by which I may have led some viewers into thinking that our mystery polka was the work of the Waltz King, Johann Strauss Jr. (Oct. 25, 1825 - June 3, 1899), it was in fact the celebrated Feurerfest! Polka by Johann Jr.'s two-years-younger brother Josef (Aug. 20, 1827 - July 22, 1870), the middle son of the trio of famous music-making sons of the founder of the Vienna Strauss dynasty, Johann Strauss Sr. (Mar. 14, 1804 - Sept. 25, 1849).

No one is likely to argue that Papa Strauss is best known to us for one of his more offhand creations, the work that always closes the Vienna New Year's Concert, which we'll hear first in a "plain" orchestral version, then in Maestro Muti's 2004 Vienna New Year's performance (with an audience even more than usually uncertain when they're supposed to add their rhythmic clapping), and finally in a snappy winds-and-percussion rendition by Ensemble "11."

JOHANN STRAUSS SR.: Radetzky March, Op. 228
Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded c1960s
Vienna Philharmonic, Riccardo Muti, cond. DG, recorded live at the 2004 Vienna New Year's Concert
(arr. for woodwinds, brass, and percussion by Anton Othmar Sollfelner) Ensemble "11" (members of the Vienna Philharmonic). Camerata, recorded May 30-June 4, 1999

As I already explained last week, the introduction of Feuerfest was a bit of a red herring. Such connection as it has to the 2021 Vienna New Year's Concert lies in the fact that it dates from the same year, 1869, as the Josef S. polka we're really interested in: Ohne Sorgen (Without Cares). We heard a bunch of performances of each last week. For this week we've got performances we haven't heard before, from different Vienna New Year's Concerts conducted by the much-missed Mariss Jansons (1943-2019), described by NPR at the time of his sudden death from a heart attack on Nov. 29, 2019, as "one of classical music's most beloved and widely heard conductors," which sounds about right.

In the Musikverein, Mariss Jansons rehearses the Vienna Philharmonic
for the 2012 Vienna New Year's Concert. (Photo by Herbert Pfarrhofer)

JOSEF STRAUSS: Feuerfest! (Fireproof!), Polka française, Op. 269

Vienna Philharmonic, Mariss Jansons, cond. Sony, recorded live at the 2012 Vienna New Year's Concert

JOSEF STRAUSS: Ohne Sorgen (Without Cares), Polka-schnell, Op. 271

Vienna Philharmonic, Mariss Jansons, cond. DG, recorded live at the 2006 Vienna New Year's Concert

Unlike Feuerfest!, a prime specimen of what I've called the "lumbering" polka, where it's not the speed but the emphaticness of movement that counts, Ohne Sorgen is an example of the Polka-schnell, or fast polka, of which we have in the fleshed-out version of last week's post vintage examples by all three of the Strauss brothers. Here from Johann Jr. we have Unter Donner und Blitz (Amid Thunder and Lightning) and from baby brother Eduard S. (Mar. 15, 1835 - Dec. 28, 1916) Bahn frei! (Clear Track), an exhilarating celebration of the railroading experience.


JOSEF STRAUSS: Ohne Sorgen (Without Cares), Polka-schnell, Op. 271

London Symphony Orchestra, John Georgiadis, violin and cond. Sanctuary Classics, recorded c1978

Johann Strauss Orchestra of Vienna, Willi Boskovsky, cond. EMI, recorded 1980-85

JOHANN STRAUSS Jr.: Unter Donner und Blitz (Amid Thunder and Lightning), Polka-schnell, Op. 324

Vienna Philharmonic, Lorin Maazel, cond. RCA, recorded live at the 1999 Vienna New Year's Concert

Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded December 1966

Vienna Philharmonic, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded c1972

EDUARD STRAUSS: Bahn frei! (Clear Track!), Polka-schnell, Op. 45

Vienna Philharmonic, Willi Boskovsky, cond. Decca, recorded in the 1960s-70s

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Peter Guth, cond. RPO-Intersound, recorded May 1994

CSR Symphony Orchestra (Bratislava), Ondrej Lenard, cond. Enigma Classics, recorded January 1988

(arr. for woodwinds, brass, and percussion by Anton Othmar Sollfelner) Ensemble "11" (members of the Vienna Philharmonic). Camerata, recorded May 30-June 4, 1999


OKAY, BUT WHY ARE WE INTERESTED IN OHNE SORGEN?

You'll recall that in the title of this post I noted -- with, I hope, unmistakable excitement -- that this year for the first time I had in hand going into the Vienna New Year's Concert a listing of the program. I had grabbed it from Maestro Muti's quite useful website (the link for the English-language version is riccardomuti.com/en/, where I must have been checking out some bit of news from the site's e-mail list. (At the time I didn't even know that Maestro Muti was conducting this year's Vienna New Year's Concert.)

So Friday, as the 9pm PBS telecast approached, I was armed with fresh-baked muffins and my program, which began something like this:

All right! There's Ohne Sorgen, in the no. 4 slot. Meanwhile, at program's start was expecting the musical portion to kick off with the March from Suppé's operetta Fatinitza, which is to say something like this (as performed by the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra under Richard Hayman):

FRANZ VON SUPPÉ: March from Fatinitza


But no! Come to think of it, didn't we establish at the outset that the PBS telecast began, musically speaking, with Suppé's Poet and Peasant Overture? In fact, Poet and Peasant doesn't appear anywhere on my list for the first part of the program. And in further fact, contrary to my initial assumption that the order of the program had been rejiggered, by telecast's end it would turn out that we didn't hear the Fatinitza March or Ohne Sorgen or any of the other works listed for this part of the program.

What was the deal?


WHAT INDEED? WE'LL NEED ONE MORE OUTING
TO GET SUCH CLARITY AS WE'RE GOING TO GET

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