Valentine's Concert

What are you going to listen to?

What could be more romantic than dancing a Viennese waltz with your quietly adored lover on Valentine's Day? This program is about waltzes and about Vienna. But a real Viennese waltz, like Johann Strauss's, does not come to mind, although we come close.

Schubert

Throughout his life Maurice Ravel was associated with Impressionism, something he sometimes disliked. He regularly went against it and tried to lead his audience astray. For example, he had the original version of the Valses nobles et sentimentales for piano performed anonymously, leaving it up to listeners to decide who the composer would be. Although various names passed in review such as Satie, d'Indy and Kodaly, most still recognized Ravel's unmistakably impressionistic hand, even if he had hidden a lot of modern gimmicks in it. He took the title of the work from Vienna, where a century earlier Schubert had published two series of waltzes, one Valses nobles and the other Valses sentimentables. A year later, Ravel created an orchestrated version of the waltzes for a ballet production. Thus they were danced to after all.

James Cervetto

At least as Viennese as Schubert was Joseph Haydn, who spent many years in the service of the princes of Esterházy in nearby Eisenstadt. There, around 1783, he composed his Second cello concerto in D. It was long assumed that Haydn wrote it for Anton Kraft, first cellist of the court orchestra. This was further confirmed by Kraft's son who afterwards even claimed that his father wrote it himself. It was only very recently discovered that Haydn probably created it for the English cello virtuoso James Cervetto who made several concert tours in Europe and presumably also visited Vienna. The work has the casual mildness that so characterizes Haydn's style. And although it is not usual to dance to a cello concerto, the joyful final rondo with its almost swinging rhythm in 6/8th measure has a dance-like catchiness.

Josef Strauss

Back to the waltz, back to Vienna, even back to Strauss, but not Johann. It was his namesake Richard - not a relative, by the way - who gained great fame in the first half of the 20th century with his sometimes controversial and mischievous operas. For example, his most famous opera Der Rosenkavalier opens in the bedroom of a wealthy officer's wife who has spent the night with her young page, a role that, to make things a little more piquant, is to be sung by a soprano. The whole idea of the opera was, to transfer the atmosphere of Vienna from Mozart's time to his own. The waltz plays an important role in the opera, as an anachronistic element from the nineteenth century in a story from a century before. Even the composer borrowed from another Strauss, again not Johann, but his brother Josef, and took a melody from his Dymaniden Walzer for his own waltz. In 1944, with Strauss' permission, Artur Rodzínski composed an instrumental suite from the opera in which the waltz, of course, has a prominent place.

Johann Strauss

Finally, once again Ravel. With his La valse , we come closest to Johann Strauss and the Viennese waltz. As early as 1905, Ravel ran with the idea of writing a symphonic poem to reflect the atmosphere of the Austrian capital at the turn of the century. He even had the plan to call it Wien . It wasn't until 15 years later that he picked it up again when he received a request for a new ballet from impresario Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes in Paris. The final result, La valse, Diaghilev rejected with the comment that it was a masterpiece, but not for dancing. Perhaps he was somewhat right. Although it seems like Johann Strauss is constantly looking over your shoulder, it is a true Ravellian impression of a Viennese waltz. Several years later, a ballet of La valse was still made. but it has remained best known as a Concert Hall masterpiece.

Kees Wisse