Viennese Light Music

The waltz and operetta, Lehar, Stolz, Kalman and above all Johann Strauss are forever in demand. A music society that ignores them will soon face penury. Who dare deny that the "gold" and the "silver" Viennese composers have more - and more faithful - followers the world over than their classical or "second school" colleagues? There is something to the lilt of the waltz, the catchy, singable operetta tune...

The Johann Strauss concert, the "Evening in Vienna", the "Glory of Vienna" have long been the stand-by and succour of concert promoters. The Vienna Philharmonic in its New Year Concert has - rather literally perhaps -jumped on that band wagon. So why should we stand apart? Over the years we have been responsible for, or been associated with, dozens of Viennese light music concerts in London - including at least two by the Vienna Philharmonic. They were fun and jolly good rousing music, and they helped to replenish coffers emptied by more austere musical endeavour.

If it is possible to make a serious contribution to the appreciation of light music it was our "concert version in costume" of Die Fledermaus. Conceived and produced by Otto Diamant, late of the Renaissance Buhne of Vienna, Johann Strauss's most famous orchestral score transposed for two pianos by Paul Hamburger and played by him and Leslie Moorhouse, sung by a brilliant cast including Hilde Lergens and Beatrice Roland, Carl Duehring, Ernest Frank, Alfred Hallett and Bernard Keeffe, costumed with the best that Berman's could supply, and with the tedious chat of the third act mercifully omitted, we toured the provinces with this highly mobile production. It was a huge success. During the 1950s we had nearly a hundred performances up and down the country. Die Fledermaus, in the guise of Gay Rosalinda may have won some critical acclaim in London and there may have been a few amateur operatic performances elsewhere, but certainly North of Watford we were the best ever! The performance was in fact very good indeed. In later years we made several attempts to bring the Vienna Volksoper to England. The project never matured - partly, of course, because of the enormous cost, but chiefly because the Volksoper's standard of operetta never really came up to our "own" beloved Fledermaus.

The Anglo-Austrian tradition of touring the "regions", or the provinces as we called them at the time, was ably continued by Josef Hofer and his Viennese Ensemble with an ambitious programme ranging from Magic Flute to Maritza and White Horse Inn to Wien, Wien nur Du allein. It was all very popular and a great success.

Two unusual light music events should have special mention: At the Queen Elizabeth Hall in October 1967 Vienna's favourite diseuse Elfriede Ott presented her Phantasie in 0-Dur, a sampling of songs from Vienna's 19th century popular music theatre, from the world of Raimund and Ncstroy, of Millockcr, the Mullers, father and son, and Suppe - sentimental, satyrical and scurrilous. In 1979 the Victoria and Albert Museum held a great Biedermeier Exhibition "Vienna in the Age of Schubert". Our contribution, in the spirit of the time, was the Klassische Wiener Schrammelquartett, modelled on the original Schrammel brothers' ensemble, who played some of the then popular music in the style and on instruments of the Biedermeier - a refreshingly different rendering of the elder Strauss and his friend Lanner, and even of Beethoven and of Schubert.