Polkas for Jocelyn

MIDNIGHT UPDATE: In addition to fleshing out the performance roster for a number of our polkas (like the Bartered Bride one, and all of Johann Strauss Jr.'s trio, and performing incidental touch-ups along the way, we've felt obliged to add yet one last polka, something kind of different, at the end. Still to come, very likely: a polka-taste of Daddy Johann Sr., like perhaps his Beliebte Annen Polka?

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,
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

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.

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?

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

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

Even if you watched the concert on PBS Friday, you're
not apt to have any clue how our polka is connected to it

Don't expect him to smile -- polka-writing is serious business!

Hey, everyone, it's polka time! (But then, isn't it always?)


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

London Symphony Orchestra, Stanley Black, cond. Decca Phase-4, recorded in the 1960s

BBC Symphony Orchestra, John Pritchard, cond. BBC Classics, recorded live at "Viennese Night at the Proms," Royal Albert Hall, Aug. 12, 1972

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

by Ken

Mind you, I'm not saying there's a simple, direct connection between our polka and this year's Vienna New Year's Concert. Some of you no doubt recognized it immediately, and some of you may be wringing your hands, saying, "I know that damn polka, which damn one is it?" And some of you may be hearing it for the first time -- I hope you enjoyed it.

If you click through to the continuation of this post tease, it will:

(a) not only clear up the tiny bit of confusion surrounding the identity of our famous polka, but --

(b) provide a more direct link to the 2021 Vienna New Year's Concert -- though as it says above, even if you watched the PBS telecast this is most unlikely to help you at all in establishing the link.

UPDATE: (c) not that it was planned, but we've wound up with a virtual tribute to our polka master, whom we'll regreet in a moment.


DO YOU BELIEVE IN THE OLD SAYING "ONE GOOD POLKA
DESERVES ANOTHER"? SAY HELLO TO OUR POLKA MASTER!