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Strauss I Bratislava and Many of Them Are Winners of International Competitions and Active Both As Soloists and Chamber Music Players

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Strauss I Bratislava and Many of Them Are Winners of International Competitions and Active Both As Soloists and Chamber Music Players 225281bk USA 12/8/04 9:52 pm Page 8 Slovak Sinfonietta of Z˘ilina DDD The Slovak Sinfonietta of Z˘ilina is one of the best known professional orchestras in Eastern Europe and holds a very important position in Slovak musical culture. It was founded in 1974 as the only “Mozart-style” orchestra in Johann 8.225281 Slovakia. Since then the orchestra has attained a prominent position in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia as well as considerable international renown. In the course of its activities over 30 years the orchestra has enjoyed an intensive artistic life. Its 35 members are mainly graduates of the Academies of Music in Prague, Brno and Strauss I Bratislava and many of them are winners of international competitions and active both as soloists and chamber music players. The quality of the players together with the experience and musicianship of the founding musical director and conductor Eduard Fischer (1930-1993) brought about the quick artistic growth of the orchestra. Already in 1977 the orchestra had won international recognition when it was invited to the Salzburg Festival and Edition • Vol. 5 designated the official orchestra of that prestigious festival. Soon after there followed appearances at the Prague Spring and major festivals throughout Europe, including the Vienna Festwochen, Spring Festival and the Haydn Festival in Vienna. Only three orchestras visit these Viennese festivals regularly every year, the Vienna Slovak Sinfonietta Z˘ilina • Christian Pollack Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Slovak Sinfonietta. The orchestra has been a guest of many other important festivals in Germany, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Bulgaria, Poland, and Brazil, in addition to concert engagements in Great Britain, Japan, Russia, Hungary, Finland, Sweden, Holland, Tunisia, Cyprus and the United States. The Slovak Sinfonietta is a small symphony orchestra, but has a very broad repertoire of baroque, classical, early romantic, and twentieth-century works. The orchestra has a natural affinity with the rich Slavic music of its cultural heritage. There has been collaboration with distinguished conductors and soloists and a number of acclaimed recordings. The music director of the orchestra from 1995 to 2001 was Leos˘ Svárovsk7. Since 2004 the music director has been Oliver von Dohnányi. The chief conductor emeritus is Tsugio Maeda from Japan. Christian Pollack The Austrian conductor Christian Pollack was born in Vienna and studied violin, viola, piano and composition at the Conservatory and Musikhochschule in Vienna. He had his training as a conductor with Hans Swarowsky in Vienna and Sergiu Celibidache in Munich. His début was in 1971 at the theatre of Regensburg, followed by further appointments in Aachen, Klagenfurt, Vienna, Lucerne and the Bregenz Festival. He has appeared as a guest-conductor with the Baden-Baden Radio Orchestra, and in the opera houses of Nuremberg, Essen and Vienna (Volksoper). Since 1995 he has been musical director of the opera class at the Vienna Conservatory and since September 2002 also chief conductor of the Z˘ilina Chamber Orchestra in Slovakia. For the Naxos and Marco Polo labels he has made a number of recordings of classical Viennese music, notably the work of the Strauss family, Ziehrer, Suppé and Komzák with the orchestras of Košice, Bratislava and Z˘ilina. 8.225281 8 225281bk USA 12/8/04 9:52 pm Page 2 Johann Strauss Snr • Edition • Vol. 5 first performance seems to have been 1832. This is also indicated by the fact that in the orchestral material there is 1 Contredanses par Jean Strauss, Œuvre 44 a part for a third violin, instead of a viola. It was almost certainly the publisher Tobias Haslinger, who gave the title of the Contredanses and the composer’s This lively work is not of great importance. It can be assumed that Tobias Haslinger, in view of the quantity of name in French, announcing the publication in the Wiener Zeitung on 20th April 1831. In this work, Johann Strauss galops from various contemporary composers and composer-conductors, had rejected its publication. turned for the first time to the form of the French quadrille, marking the six parts of the works Pantalon, Eté, La Poule, Pastourelle and Finale (Pantalon, Summer, The Hen, Pastorale, Finale). In 1833 Joseph Lanner followed with his # Tivoli-Freudenfest-Tänze. Op. 45 (Tivoli Festival Dances) Quadrille française, Op. 68. Dedicated to Her Imperial and Royal Highness Sophie Friederike, Archduchess of Austria, née Princess of Strauss took the melodies of his Contredanses from actual operas that particularly interested the Viennese Bavaria, with deepest respect. public at that time. At this time Rossini’s music was to be heard and for the first time Strauss used melodies from The Tivoli Festival Dances were first performed at the first ball that Johann Strauss directed at the Green Hill the comic opera Fra Diavolo by Daniel-François-Esprit Auber, which had had its first performance in January 1830 Tivoli establishment. This ball was advertised for May 1831 but had to be moved to June because of unfavourable at the Paris Opéra-comique, followed by a staging at the Vienna Imperial Court Opera Theatre at the Kärntnerthor weather. The editions for piano, for violin and piano, and for three violins and bass were advertised for the first on 18th September 1830. time on 9th July 1831 in the Wiener Zeitung by Tobias Haslinger. The new Strauss waltzes quickly became known, The first French quadrilles that Strauss wrote were not, then, after his Paris concerts of 1839 and his meeting as the Tivoli attracted many visitors in 1831. Among these were Archduke Franz Carl and his wife Sophie with the conductor Philippe Musard (1793-1859), when he was significantly influenced by the Paris quadrilles for Friederike, who had become particularly popular with the birth of a son on 18th August 1830, the future successor which the French composer drew largely on operatic melodies, the inspiration for his own masterly figure dances in to the throne, Franz Joseph. It is easily understandable that Strauss should dedicate his new waltz to the his Vienna Carnival Quadrille, Op. 124. Archduchess. The Tivoli Festival Dances are very interesting. In the fortissimo note from the whole orchestra can be 2 Benefice-Walzer, Op. 33 (performed at the Sperl) understood the invitation ‘Look at this!’ and the following semiquavers of the bass instruments as the rolling of the 1830 seemed to be a generally favourable year for the Viennese. The disadvantages experienced in the Austrian two-seated sliding carriages. These references were certainly understood by music-lovers, as the slide down the Empire through the Napoleonic wars between 1802 and 1815 that had led to the financial reform and the rigorous gentle slope was still popular. The young Fryderyk Chopin could not avoid the charm of this attraction. In July depreciation of the currency in 1811 had been surmounted. Above all, the people of Vienna looked forward to a 1831 he wrote to his family: ‘St Veit is a pretty village, but I cannot say the same of the so-called Tivoli, where decade of relative prosperity. Philipp Fahrbach (1815-1885) in his Alt-Wiener Erinnerungen* (Memories of Old there is a kind of carousel, or rather a slide with carriages that they call “Rutsch” here. A stupid thing...Later, Vienna) wrote: ‘Public life was at that time still very prosperous, food was cheap and one could eat and drink when we began to go down, I changed from being a fervent Saul, a critic of this silly Viennese business, into an enough with one Zwanziger. Business and trade were flourishing, looms were working, factory-owners and enthusiastic Paul.’ wholesale dealers prospered, forming a minor aristocracy, indulging in luxury to their hearts’ content’. Later In the following years the appeal of Tivoli gradually declined. From 1834 Johann Strauss no longer played at popular songs in Vienna sang of this as the ‘golden, golden age’. The brilliance of this mood shines also in the the Green Hill and the establishment went downhill. In 1844 it was changed by the Tyrolese Franz Lechner into a melodies of the Benefit Waltz that Strauss wrote for the first of his own balls in carnival 1830, first performed at the dairy-farm. The younger Johnn Strauss played there, while the music pavilion was still standing. The Tivoli Sperl on 16th February. It was, however, a simple work without an introduction, but in the five sections and the Festival Dances were the last new compositions of the older Johnn Strauss to be heard at the Tivoli. extensive coda, Strauss offered lively, charming melodies, cleverly and carefully combined. Particularly attractive were the trills in No. 4, offering an unusually effective ending to the stretta of the cheerful waltz. There were no Franz Mailer press reports of this ball, but the success of the work must have been considerable, as it was often performed and English version by Keith Anderson very quickly appeared, on 4th March 1830, in Tobias Haslinger’s imprint. Strauss provided no further novelty for carnival 1830. About two weeks after his Benefit Ball, on the night of 28th February/1st March the Danube, blocked by ice in the unusually cold winter, overflowed its banks and flooded Leopoldstadt, on an island in the river. The theatre in Leopoldstadt and the Sperl were shut, and many houses could only be reached by boat. Strauss’s family was forced out of its house and had to take refuge in temporary quarters. Some time in 1830 Johann Strauss and Joseph Lanner, for the moment the best of friends, moved into shared quarters with a landlady called Anna Zinagl, who also provided lodgings for girls who had come to Vienna from the provinces, among them a certain Emilie Trampusch from Saatz.
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