Month: February 2019

Jacques Offenbach might well have been the French equivalent of Franz von Suppe and, later on, Vienna’s Strauss family in that he wrote a great deal of very pleasing music of high energy which was often infused with the rhythms and vibrancy of the dance. His most famous work is likely his operetta Orpheus in the Underworld, a scintillating operetta indeed whose tuneful and wonderfully sparkling overture is full of singing melodies that culminate in one of the most famous melodies of all time, the brassy Can-can. Here is that very overture, performed quite wonderfully by a youth orchestra I had never heard of before, the Gimnazija Kranj Symphony Orchestra. They have a lot of neat performances available on YouTube, quite a few of which I recommend seeking out.

And now, Jacques Offenbach.

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When in doubt, there are always Mozart and Beethoven.

In 1822 Karl Friedrich Hensler, a Vienna dramatist and theater manager, was opening a rebuilt venue called the Theater in der Josefstadt, which still stands and is apparently now the oldest operating theater in Vienna. For the theater’s reopening, Hensler commissioned a work by Ludwig van Beethoven. The great composer had recently been studying the music of Bach and Handel, and with those sorts of Baroque fugues and sounds in his heart, he displayed their influence in this wonderful concert overture. It’s hard not to listen to the fanfare passage a few minutes in, with its accompanying runs in the bassoons, and not think of things like Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks. But shortly after we’re right back in the 19th century, with Beethoven’s characteristic sense of forward motion. It’s a fine, fine piece, and how fitting that a theater which had this work performed at its opening almost two hundred years ago is still operating today.

Here is Beethoven’s Consecration of the House.

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