Dancing in Vienna
Philharmonic Concert Orchestra/Iain Sutherland
rec. live, c. 1990-1995
Somm Recordings SOMMCD0708 [78]
In December 2010 my colleague Bob Briggs reviewed several releases from the City of Glasgow Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Iain Sutherland. As well as the appropriately seasonal Great Christmas classics, they included Great Scottish classics, Great Irish classics and Great Viennese classics. The latter proved to be a 66 minutes long collection of 15 pieces. Some inclusions, such as The Radetzky march and The pizzicato polka, might have been easily anticipated. However, Mr Sutherland also included a handful of more rarely encountered works, including the Salute the Magyars! polka and The bandit galop – the latter being a few minutes of music once deftly characterised by my colleague Jonathan Woolf as “Keystone Cops paraphernalia”.
No fewer than ten of those 15 pieces (including a slightly retitled version of Salute the Magyars!, but not, sadly, The bandit galop) appear on this new Somm CD, also conducted by Mr Sutherland. As a result, I did momentarily wonder whether this might be a case of re-released material. However, the two discs’ contents are played, it seems, by different orchestras. Moreover, their track timings vary considerably. The Pizzicato polka, for instance,lasts 2:19 in the Glasgow performance but 2:44 when played by the Philharmonic Concert Orchestra. These do not, then, appear to be recycled recordings.
This new CD focuses most of its attention, as you might expect, on the second half of the 19th century. Chronologically speaking, the two earliest pieces date from 1858. They are followed by one from 1866, two from 1868, no less than seven from 1869 and one each composed in 1870, 1874, 1889 and 1898. Most exhibit a certain stylistic consistency, evocative of an era when the bewhiskered Habsburg Emperor Franz Joseph might be found hosting glamorous and elaborately glittering balls at the Hofburg Palace – exactly, in fact, as depicted in the painting by Wilhelm Gause reproduced on the CD booklet’s front cover.
Rather unexpectedly, however, Dancing in Vienna also includes a handful of tracks that are outliers, either in their date of composition or because of the nature of their music. The three Brahms Hungarian dances are, for instance, a somewhat odd addition to the programme. After all, in spite of their title they were not pieces actually written be danced, but instead were intended to be listened to by seated audiences in concert halls. Am I taking too purist a position? After all, we rightly assume that this CD will be listened to by a home audience that’s also seated, rather than expecting its contents to get mum and dad rolling up the carpet and waltzing around the coffee table. Perhaps it’s no big deal, therefore, for its producers to include a handful of “dances” that aren’t actually for the dancing promised on the disc’s very cover. Whatever the case, idiomatic performances like these will probably be enjoyed just at much at home today as they have been in the past, whether by would-be sprightly dancers or relaxed armchair listeners.
Another issue arises from the two tracks on the disc that were composed by Robert Stolz. He was both Viennese through and through – becoming only the second musician to receive the city’s Grand Medal of Honour – and an undoubtedly skilled composer across several genres. Nevertheless, it has to be said that his contributions are rather odd additions to a disc that’s otherwise composed of material written during a much earlier and stylistically very different period of musical history.
While I’ve been unable to discover the precise date of composition of the Viennese café waltz, its themes and orchestration definitely suggest that it would have been written post-World War II. It is equally definitely an acquired musical taste, as Stolz adds enough generous dollops of distinctively 20th century schmaltz, piled on as thick as the whipped-cream on an Einspänner coffee, to make even Strauss’s Emperor waltz seem, in comparison, a paragon of dry, austere reserve. Meanwhile, I suspect that I won’t be the only listener who finds it somewhat discombobulating that the other Stolz track, Greetings from Vienna (1952), has been chosen to open the whole CD and thereby be responsible for establishing its overall mood. Though perfectly pleasant in itself, Greetings features passages (1:14-1:48 and 2:05-2:39) that really do sound as if they might have been used as the backing soundtrack for an old 1960s Look at life cinema featurette (“Welcome to Vienna, home of The third man and the beautiful blue Danube, where we find this charming young Fräulein enjoying a coffee and a delicious slice of Sachertorte on fashionable Mariahilfer Strasse…”).
I freely concede that the presence of these two well-played pieces on a CD entitled Dancing in Vienna can certainly be justified. Whether it was wise to include them is, however, another matter entirely, for they do stick out a bit like sore thumbs among the rest of the characteristically 19th century material.
Putting the problematic appropriateness of the Brahms and Stolz tracks’ presence to one side, there is a great deal to enjoy here, for everything is performed with a great deal of evident affection and skill. A glance at Iain Sutherland’s biography confirms his huge experience as a conductor across a very wide range of repertoire. Now retired and approaching his 90th birthday, he must have conducted these pieces very many times over the years. In such circumstances, it hasn’t been unknown for conductors to deliver routine performances virtually on autopilot but, thankfully, what we have here is far from that. Of course, the previously-noted time discrepancy in those two Pizzicato polka performances should have already alerted us to the fact that Mr Sutherland is less likely to be a predictable play-it-by-rote conductor than one inspired by the individual circumstances of the moment. Indeed, while many of the melodies on this new CD are familiar, he brings plenty of unexpected touches – a slight hesitation here, an unanticipated pause or tweak in orchestral balance there – that keep us listeners on our toes and encourage us to listen to,rather than simply hear,the music. Livelier pieces, such as Chatterboxes go with a real swing. Eduard Strauss’s quick polka Clear the track! is a particular success in that respect, even if it can’t equal the nonpareil of musical train journeys, Hans Christian Lumbye’s Copenhagen steam railway galop which, as my colleague Brian Wilson long ago pointed out, was to serve as the model for no less than three subsequent locomotive-themed compositions by members of the Strauss family. Sutherland is clearly a man who knows this repertoire really well. Moreover, he exhibits a genuine feel for a style of delivery appropriate to the music and is able to communicate that to and inspire his players.
Some critics might suggest that this sort of repertoire is not especially taxing. To a large extent they would be correct, for let’s keep in mind that these waltzes, polkas and the rest were specifically composed for orchestras and dancers of the widest range of abilities. While our minds’ eyes invariably picture them being exquisitely danced by glamorously-attired aristocrats to the strains of refined court orchestras, they were, in fact, far more often performed by semi-professional (and, one suspects, often semi-competent) bands in drab and draughty town halls where the attendant bourgeois worthies might not always be particularly nifty on their feet.
Even such relatively straightforward scores can, of course, include the odd potential pitfall for the unwary, but I’m pleased to say that all such hazards are successfully navigated here. In fact, the orchestra, recorded, it would seem, at various live concerts over the space of five years or so in the early 1990s, plays the music very attractively and in fine style. It is, of course, competing with many of the world’s greatest bands which have, over the decades, also performed much the same material. As you might expect, in such circumstances the Philharmonic Concert Orchestra does not manage to stand out from the crowd. Yet, while its players may not exhibit the full degree of grand sonority that, say, the Vienna Philharmonic brings to the table, they certainly produce performances that are never less than satisfying.
With a few exceptions – The dragonfly and the first and fifth of the Hungarian dances – each track on this CD ends with well-deserved audience applause. While there is a very occasional and hardly noticeable bit of noise from the stalls, I actually find that it lends an appropriately “fun” atmosphere to the recordings and so don’t mind it one bit. As one might expect from recordings made live in concert halls, the sound may be somewhat broad brush and lacking in fine detail but is, for all that, eminently serviceable.
Anyone in the market for a mixed bag of this sort of repertoire will no doubt gain a good deal of innocent yet genuine pleasure from this very well filled disc.
Rob Maynard
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Contents
Robert Stolz (1880-1975)
Greetings from Vienna, march(1952)
Richard Heuberger (1850-1914)
The opera ball (1898)
Josef Strauss (1827-1870)
Chatterboxes, quick polka (1868)
The dragonfly, polka-mazurka (1866)
Eduard Strauss (1835-1916)
Clear the track!, quick polka (1869)
Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)
Emperor waltz (1889)
Josef Strauss (1827-1870)
Jockey polka (1870)
Johann II Strauss (1825-1899) and Josef Strauss (1827-1870)
Pizzicato polka (1869)
Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)
Long live the Magyar!, quick polka (1869)
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Hungarian dance no. 1 (1869)
Hungarian dance no. 5 (1869)
Hungarian dance no. 6 (1869)
Josef Strauss (1827-1870)
Fireproof!, polka-française (1869)
Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)
Tritsch-tratsch polka (1858)
Thunder and lightning polka (1868)
Robert Stolz (1880-1975)
Viennese café, waltz (?)
Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)
Die Fledermaus overture (1874)
Champagne polka (1858)
