Spotlight Strauss Family: waltzes and polkas

Karajan loved the works of the Strauss family and conducted and recorded them throughout his entire career between 1930 and 1989 not only with the Vienna Philharmonic but also with “his” two other orchestras, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Philharmonia. Although a large number of these works are quite short (mainly the polkas and galopps) it is remarkable that Karajan conducted more different works by the Strausses than by Beethoven.

At the beginning of his very first engagement in Ulm, he conducted two waltzes by Johann Strauss II for the New Year’s Eve concert in J1930. It seems that Karajan – being not Viennese but Austrian – was regularly asked to conduct the Strauss family (this is Johann Strauss I, Johann Strauss II and Josef Strauss) in his German engagements in Ulm, Aachen and Berlin between 1930 and 1945. Some of his first ever recordings with the Berlin Philharmonic were Strauss waltzes (“Künstlerleben” in 1940, “Kaiserwalzer” in 1941 and the overture to “Der Zigeunerbaron” in 1942). Karajan’s biographer Peter Uehling preferred these recordings to those made shortly after World War II with the orchestra which is regarded as the authority for waltzes, the Vienna Philharmonic.

“The orchestral colour of the Berlin version is more detailed, the ‘effort’ that one can hear, the slight hesitation is a sentimental distance to the world this music comes from. The Viennese by contrast are enjoying themselves and are not willing to produce such a historic dimension.”

In the next decades, the Vienna Philharmonic played Strauss music in concert under Karajan’s baton when it represented the Viennese music and culture abroad. The world fair in Brussels in 1958, the so-called “World Tour” in 1959 and concerts in the Soviet Union in 1962 were terrific occasions for music making in three-four time. Karajan also recorded several works – preferably the spectacular shorter works – with the British Philharmonia Orchestra in 1955 and some of them again in 1960.

After his resignation as manager of the Vienna State Opera, Karajan concentrated on his position as a chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. In 1966 and in 1969, he recorded 19 Strauss works including great waltzes and some of the shorter works with the Berliners aiming to prove that an orchestra doesn’t need to be Viennese to make stylish recordings of this music. Maybe that is why he was also in the mood to improvise on the “Donauwalzer” on the piano at the beginning of his conversation with Yehudi Menuhin – a film that was made in addition to their Mozart film in 1966. When Karajan stops playing with the remark that now they will switch to a “serious” rehearsal, Menuhin replies: “Oh, Strauss is just as serious!” Karajan goes on to say  that he would like to talk about what Strauss and Menuhin have in common and Menuhin says: “Very little unfortunately…” but Karajan remarks that both are violinists and orchestra leaders (watch the film in the story about Menuhin).

This is a reference to Johann Strauss II, the most famous of the family. Famously, the “Waltz King” said about his brother Josef: “He is the more gifted of us, I’m the more popular.” And indeed, “the melancholy of Josef Strauss’s music and its exquisite craftmanship held a special fascination for Karajan (Richard Osborne).” Josef was greatly interested in Wagner’s music and used his orchestral techniques for the composition of waltzes and polkas. Some of them are among the most beautiful in this genre, for example “Sphärenklänge”, “Delirienwalzer” or “Dynamiden”. In the early 1980s, Karajan told Roger Vaughn: “I admire Josef Strauss for his waltzes but even more for the introductions to those waltzes. He was as gifted for introductions as Wagner. I recorded the ‘Delirienwalzer’ for the simple reason that I wanted to play it without the usual banalities.”

At that time, he had finished his second series of Strauss recordings with the Berlin Philharmonic. Although he conducted the “Zigeunerbaron” overture and “Sphärenklänge” at two New Year’s Eve concerts in Berlin in 1983 and 1985 he probably felt that this was the end of his engagement with the Strauss family in general.

 

To be continued…

—  P.R. Jenkins