TUESDAY FURTHER CONSIDERATION: On second and third thought, I think maybe the way to go is a little appendix-post in the next day or two [or maybe a tad longer -- Ed.] with, yes, some bits of Papa Johann, and also some stray polkas I've been thinking about from beyond the Strauss family orbit. Like I've been listenting to some orchestral Stravinsky and was reminded of his Circus Polka, and there's Rachmaninoff's Polka de W.R., and maybe another miscellaneous polka or two. Stay tuned.
Is there a rousinger polka than this?
It's the finale of Act I of Smetana's The Bartered Bride
VILLAGERS: Come on, girls, let's be merry,In this 1981 film directed by František Filip, Prague National Theater forces. including soprano Gabriela Beňačková (Mařenka), tenor Peter Dvorský (Jeník), and bass Richard Novák (Kecal), with the Czech Philharmonic conducted by Zdeněk Košler, dance and sing their way to the end of Act I.
while the band is playing polkas!
Hand in hand and eye to eye,
while the whole world swirls and dances!
The brasses are booming, cimbaloms clanking,
music's blaring all around us!
Everyone is on the move --
we can't stand still and watch!-- translation by Peter C. Sutro
Here it is again, first in a classic recording under a storied Czech composer-conductor, then -- as we've heard it before -- in higher-quality audio with a fine Czech conductor but in German (in which language the opera has an extensive performing history):
Prague National Opera Chorus and Orchestra, Otakar Ostrčil, cond. HMV, recorded in Vienna, June 6-23, 1933
[in German] Bavarian Radio Chorus, Munich Radio Orchestra, Jaroslav Krombholc, cond. Eurodisc, recorded April 1975
by Ken
Here's just the Bartered Bride Polka itself. The performance conducted by the late Jiří Bělohlávek (1946-2017) seems to me a special treat -- he just has the music in his bloodstream.
SMETANA: Polka from The Bartered Bride
New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded 1965
Vienna Philharmonic, James Levine, cond. DG, recorded June 1986
Prague Symphony Orchestra, Jiří Bělohlávek, cond. Supraphon, recorded c1980s
There's a fair amount more to say, and of course more to hear, with regard to the dances in Smetana's great comic opera The Bartered Bride, and we'll get to that. First, though, I should explain what we're doing today.
My friend Jocelyn, who's not a classical-music devotee but has heard way more than her share of my whining about the agonies of producing these silly little blogposts, called some days ago to say she'd checked out last week's post ("For the first time ever, this year I went into the Vienna New Year's Concert armed with a listing of the program contents!")
and enjoyed it, thanks principally to its abundance of polkas, which she'd never thought of as concert offerings. Whereas when I think of polka, and I do, a lot, it's almost always in the array of uses composers have put it to.
Mostly unrelated to the pandemic, Jocelyn had a rough week last week, in a rough month, in a rough year, and I was delighted to hear that that blogpost had provided some relief. So my next thought was, I'll bet we've got a pile of polkas sitting idle in the Sunday Classics archive. Maybe I could drag them out for Jocelyn. Maybe even get an easy post out of it.
Well, in my world there doesn't appear to be such a thing as an easy post. Nevertheless, that's basically what we're going to do. More polkas, mostly drawn from the archive.
And, um, stuff.
WHAT SETS -- AND KEEPS -- A BODY IN MOTION MORE
SURELY AND IRRESISTIBLY THAN A GOOD POLKA?
