New Year’s Concert
Thu 9 January 2025 • 20.15
Fri 10 January 2025 • 20.15
Sun 12 January 2025 • 14.15
PROGRAMME
conductor Manfred Honeck
Franz von Suppé (1819–1895)
Leichte Kavallerie: Overture (1866)
Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)
Hungarian Dance No. 1, WoO 1 No. 1 (1879)
Franz Lehár (1870–1948)
Gold und Silber, Waltz, op. 79 (1902)
Josef Strauss (1827–1870)
Ohne Sorgen, Schnellpolka, op. 271
Karl Ziehrer (1843–1922)
Weana Mad’ln, Waltz, op. 388 (1888)
Josef Strauss
Plappermäulchen, Schnellpolka op. 245 (1868)
intermission
Johann Strauss jr. (1824–1899)
• Der Zigeunerbaron: Overture (1885)
• Éljen a Magyar, Schnellpolka, op. 332 (1869)
Josef Strauss
• Die Libelle, Polka-Mazurka op. 204 (1866)
Johann Strauss jr.
• Kaiser-Walzer, Waltz, op. 437 (1889)
• Auf der Jagd, Schnellpolka, op. 373 (1875)
• Im Krapfenwaldl, Polka française, op. 336 (1869)
• Unter Donner und Blitz, Schnellpolka, op. 324 (1868)
Concert ends at around 22.15/16.15
One hour before the start of the concert, Remko de Jager will give an introduction (in Dutch) to the programme, admission €7,50. Tickets are available at the hall, payment by debit card. The introduction is free for Vrienden.
Cover: Photo Michael Maasen (Unsplash)
Five people in ball attire. Anonymous fashion illustration from 1845. Coll. Wien Museum Inv.-Nr. M 31274
Johann Strauss and his orchestra at a Royal Court Ball. Lithography after a watercolour by Theo Zasche (c. 1890)
The Waltz King and his entourage
Johann Strauss jr. and his orchestra were enormously popular – conductor Manfred Honeck calls them ‘the Beatles of the late 19th century’. That success meant that the young Strauss surpassed his father, who had already made a name for himself with his own Strauss Orchestra.
It was Strauss senior who in the first half of the 19th century had transformed the polka – a Bohemian folk dance – into something ultra-feisty for city dwellers to enjoy. It was also he who had expanded the waltz from a simple Austrian peasant dance in 3/4 time to a larger format that linked five to seven dances together. To perform that music he had his own orchestra: the musicians in formal red livery, he himself with his violin tucked under his chin, his dark looks rendering him handsome and exotic, ‘a modern-day devilish charmer’.
But Johann junior’s star eclipsed that of his father. At its première, his very first waltz was encored 19 times, giving rise to the newspaper comment: ‘Guten Abend Strausz-Vater, guten Morgen Strausz-Sohn!’ Under Johann Strauss jr., the waltz conquered not only Vienna but also Europe – and even the USA, where Strauss once led a thousand-strong orchestra in Boston in a performance An der schönen blauen Donau (The Blue Danube).
Entourage
Strauss jr. had a large number of friends, competitors and admirers. These included Franz von Suppé, who, whenever he conducted his own work, started by taking a pinch of snuff, the resulting sneeze indicating the upbeat. His Overture Leichte Kavallerie (Light
Cavalry) opens an operetta about romantic intrigues in a village that is disrupted by the arrival of a group of hussars.
One of Strauss’s biggest admirers was Johannes Brahms, a Vienna-based German with a love of Hungarian music. The set of 21 Hungarian dances that he collected and arranged would surpass virtually all his compositions in popularity, no. 1 being one of the most popular of them all.
‘Hang your violin upon the wall and devote yourself entirely to composition,’ was the advice Antonín Dvořák gave to the conservatory student Franz Lehár. The talented youngster followed that advice and eventually inherited the throne of Johann Strauss. His breakthrough came in 1902 with Gold und Silber (Gold and Silver), a waltz of which the recently deceased Waltz King himself would not have been ashamed.
Josef Strauss, the younger brother of Johann jr., was determined not to enter the world of music. He studied engineering at the Vienna Polytechnic, directed the construction of a dam, and invented a mechanical streetsweeper. But blood is thicker than water: Josef finally succumbed and wrote his first waltz. He named it ‘Die Erste und Letzte von Josef Strauss’ (The First and the Last by Josef Strauss), resolute in his intention that it would be his only composition. Fortunately, things turned out differently: 16 years later he produced his 271st work, the polka Ohne Sorgen (Without a care).
One of the Strauss family’s fiercest rivals was Carl Michael Ziehrer. With his own ensemble he did everything possible to outshine the Strauss Orchestra, and also wanted to
overshadow Strauss as a composer. The waltz Weana Mad’ln, (Viennese Girls) became such a big hit that Strauss might well have been a little concerned.
Another work by Josef Strauss, the brother who never wanted to become a composer, is the polka Plappermäulchen – a ‘musical joke’, as the composer describes it. The ‘chatterbox’ to whom the title refers is Josef’s 10-year-old daughter Karolina Anna. The music portrays her as a bouncy bundle of energy.
Waltz King
After the interval we turn the spotlights on Johann Strauss the Younger, the bicentennial of whose birth we celebrate in 2025. His operetta Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron) came into being in an unusual way: Strauss wrote the music and then Ignaz Schnitzer wrote the libretto. This meant that the composer was not constrained by ‘the tyranny of the word’. This unusual approach proved a huge success: immediately after its première the operetta was given 84 consecutive performances.
The Hungarian theme continues with Éljen a Magyar! – Long live the Hungarians! Strauss wrote the polka two years after Austria and Hungary were united in a dual monarchy; it was his personal gesture of goodwill to the Hungarians.
This is followed by brother Josef’s Die Libelle (The Dragonfly). His inspiration was the damselflies that he watched flying above the Traunsee when he was on holiday there. Johannes Brahms was a big fan of this polkamazurka; in 1889 he played the piano version for one of the very first sound recordings ever made.
Strauss composed the Kaiserwalzer (Emperor Waltz) for a meeting between emperors Franz Joseph I of Austria and Wilhelm II of Germany.
Less than two weeks after its first performance in Berlin, the music was played in Vienna – conducted by Carl Ziehrer, of all people. Strauss’s great rival had managed to get hold of a piano version of the score and was able to make his own orchestration in double-quick time. Intensely irritated, Strauss wasted no time at all: in the same month he conducted his own waltz in the Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein. Only after the orchestra played the waltz for a second time did the audience stop cheering.
Whenever Franz von Suppé conducted his own work, he started by taking a pinch of snuff, the resulting sneeze indicating the upbeat
The youngest of the Strauss brothers, Eduard, now gets some attention – indirectly – with the polka Auf der Jagd (On the Hunt): in 1875 he conducted what is believed to be its first performance. The score stipulates a real pistol shot. The Polka française Im Krapfenwaldl (In the Krapfen Woods) has its origins in Russia. Strauss wrote it during a visit to Russia, where it received its première under the name ‘Im Pawlosks Walde’ (In the Pavlovsk Woods), referring to the country estate in which Strauss walked and drew inspiration. But in Vienna, Pavlosk quickly became Krapfenwald; after all, the birdsong in that park was the same as in Russia.
On the occasion of Shrove Tuesday in February 1868 Strauss wrote Unter Donner und Blitz (Thunder and Lightning) for the Vienna Artists’ Association Hesperus. Strauss’s most popular polka? With its thunderous drum rolls and clashing cymbals, depicting a summer storm, it’s certainly the loudest! geval zijn luidruchtigste.
Stephen Westra
Manfred Honeck • conductor
Born: Nenzing, Austria
Current position: Music Director Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
Education: Vienna University of Music Awards: European Conducting Prize (1993) Orchestra experience: as a violist in the Vienna State Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic Subsequently: asssistant to Claudio Abbado at the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, founder and director Vienna Jeunesses Orchestra, Music Director Zurich Opera House; Music Director Norwegian National Opera; Principal Guest Conductor Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra; Chief Conductor Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra; General Music Director Stuttgart State Opera
Guest appearances: Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Staatskapelle Dresden, London Symphony Orchestra, Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 1995
Photo: Felix Broede
Musicians Agenda
Fri 7 February 2025 • 20.15
singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright
conductor Lee Mills
Songs from the albums Want 1 and Want 2
Fri 14 February 2025 • 20.15
conductor Tarmo Peltokoski
Isolde Miina-Liisa Värelä
Tristan Andreas Schager
Brangäne Martina Dike
König Marke Stephen Milling
lighting design Paul van Laak
Wagner Tristan und Isolde: second act (concert performance)
Music for Breakfast No. 3
Sun 2 March 2025 • 10.30
Trattoria Sophia
For musicians and programme see rpho.nl
Fri 7 March 2025 • 20.15
Sun 9 March 2025 • 14.15
conductor Han-na Chang
bassoon Lola Descours
Ravel Pavane pour une infante défunte
Jolivet Bassoon concerto
Ravel Boléro
Prokofiev Symphony No.5
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Chief Conductor
Lahav Shani
Honorary Conductor
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Principal Guest Conductor
Tarmo Peltokoski
First Violin
Marieke Blankestijn, concertmeester
Quirine Scheffers
Hed Yaron Meyerson
Saskia Otto
Arno Bons
Rachel Browne
Maria Dingjan
Marie-José Schrijner
Noëmi Bodden
Petra Visser
Sophia Torrenga
Hadewijch Hofland
Annerien Stuker
Alexandra van Beveren
Marie Duquesnoy
Giulio Greci
Second Violin
Charlotte Potgieter
Frank de Groot
Laurens van Vliet
Elina Staphorsius
Jun Yi Dou
Bob Bruyn
Eefje Habraken
Maija Reinikainen
Babette van den Berg
Melanie Broers
Tobias Staub
Sarah Decamps
Viola
Anne Huser
Roman Spitzer
Galahad Samson
José Moura Nunes
Kerstin Bonk
Janine Baller
Francis Saunders
Veronika Lénártová
Rosalinde Kluck
León van den Berg
Olfje van der Klein
Jan Navarro
Cello
Emanuele Silvestri
Joanna Pachucka
Daniel Petrovitsch
Mario Rio
Eelco Beinema
Carla Schrijner
Pepijn Meeuws
Yi-Ting Fang
Double Bass
Matthew Midgley
Ying Lai Green
Jonathan Focquaert
Robert Franenberg
Harke Wiersma
Arjen Leendertz
Ricardo Neto
Javier Clemen Martínez
Flute
Juliette Hurel
Joséphine Olech
Manon Gayet
Flute/Piccolo
Beatriz Da Baião
Oboe
Karel Schoofs
Anja van der Maten
Oboe/Cor Anglais
Ron Tijhuis
Clarinet
Julien Hervé
Bruno Bonansea
Alberto Sánchez García
Clarinet/ Bass Clarinet
Romke-Jan Wijmenga
Bassoon
Pieter Nuytten
Lola Descours
Marianne Prommel
Bassoon/
Contrabassoon
Hans Wisse
Horn
David Fernández Alonso
Felipe Freitas
Wendy Leliveld
Richard Speetjens
Laurens Otto
Pierre Buizer
Trumpet
Alex Elia
Adrián Martínez
Simon Wierenga
Jos Verspagen
Trombone
Pierre Volders
Alexander Verbeek
Remko de Jager
Bass Trombone
Rommert Groenhof
Tuba
Hendrik-Jan Renes
Percussion
Danny van de Wal
Ronald Ent
Martijn Boom
Adriaan Feyaerts
Harp
Albane Baron