I cannot remember a time when there was no music in my lite. My father used to play Johann Strauss’ operettas and waltzes on the piano as he had heard them time and again as a young man, before the First World War, in Vienna. He also played Schubert and Beethoven, and as soon as we children could play the cello or violin adequately, we made music together. But my father always played Johann Strauss on his own - I just listened. Thus this music became part of everyday life tor me, and when I later came to play it myself in the orchestra, I always took it just as seriously as a Brahms symphony or the St Metthew Passion. I was fascinated by the natural ease with which the Viennese - and only the Viennese - played Johann Strauss. In Vienna there was of course an unbroken tradition going back to the original Strauss orchestra. Many musicians from this legendary orchestra, who had played under Strauss himself, passed on their knowledge. Their pupils, some of whom are still alive, played in the big Viennese orchestras. There was also contact with the composer’s widow Adele Strauss, who did not die until 1930. Frau Strauss was an expert and critical authority on her husband's work, and remained an energetic representative of his intentions to the end of her life. Notwithstanding, one cannot ignore the fact that certain small pauses have grown larger from year to year, slow tempi have got faster and fast ones slower, the dash has become more dashing and the innuendo too. The scores we used to play from were in every case the “arrangements” of self-appointed Strauss "specialists”, who claimed that the composer’s own instrumentation really wasn’t that good, and that Strauss himself hadn’t stipulated exactly how the music should be performed. The true reason was of course quite different: when the copyright restrictions were lifted in 1931, thirty-two years after the composer’s death, a real bonanza offered itself to the clever arranger. Soon enough, Johann Strauss could be heard all over the world in the most diverse arrangements, always adulterated. Accurate, unedited scores became almost unobtainable.
This situation has improved in recent years. There are now a few good editions of "Die Fledermaus" on the market - Swarowsky`s 1968 score, for example, or the Racek edition published in 1974 by the Johann Strauss Society - but in general, it remains easier to get hold of an original text of Bach than of Johann Strauss! And it is still the case that Strauss' music is performed worldwide, inexplicably even in his native Vienna, in arrangements that to differing extents distort the original music. Thus, a number of "traditioirs” have overlapped in the last sixty years, and it is worthwhile investigating the sources of the various “typically Viennese” features of Strauss interpretation. Among the genuine Strauss there is quite a bit of “forgery” that countless revered Vienna performances have imbued with an aura of authenticity.
Looking at the old scores, conducting parts or other authentic sources, one is struck by the fact that Strauss expressly demands countless tempo changes (eg. in the slow part of the csárdás no. 10: slow C, bar 9 () on the pause, bar10 second half accelerando, bar 11 a tempo, bar 13 second half a () etc...), often within the shortest space, e. g. the speeding-up or slowing-down of half a bar, then back to the previous tempo. Many pieces are absolutely overloaded with such markings. (In the first part of the first finale, in bar 197 - Du, du... duidu, la la la - we are normally offered a shower of alternating fast and slow tempt nowadays. This may well have a fairly long tradition, though - the indignant Adele Strauss complained: "...I'd like to know who was responsible for this...".)
If we compare recordings or performances from the last 50 years, we find that for all their diversity they do have one thing in common: scarcely any attention is paid to the composer’s instructions. Instead, we hear numerous changes made by individual interpreters, often very clever and of considerable impact, which have no foundation whatsoever in the source material - they just come from “tradition”. Not unfortunately from a tradition that goes back to Johann Strauss, but one that was gradually born from the interplay of effect, arrangement, audience reaction and so on. Here a couple of examples from the overture: It begins allegro vivace C, fairly fast in other words; as soon as bar 7, a resounding wrong note is heard from practically every quarter - the flute, both oboes and the clarinets, and first and second violins should play a D and not an E! In bar 13, the allegretto is usually played in a brisk alla breve C today - but Strauss clearly rubbed out this marking, and set the C in 4/4, so this tempo cannot be intended as fast. And in the tempo di valse, the Fledermaus waltz, a pause is made after the fourth bar (bar 126), growing longer and longer with the passing of time, for which there is absolutely no reason. On the contrary, the hemiolas (two disguised 3/2 bars instead of the four 3/4 bars) in the preceding bars (122-126) lead directlv into the walz with the crescendo molto. If Strauss had wanted such a conspicuous effect, he would most certainly have written it in. Even in the text there is a whole series of alterations which can in no instance be seen as improvements.
If we try to understand and then realise the composer’s instructions, we soon notice that there is no room for extra “innuendos". Here, even the above-mentioned good editions are somewhat misleading, since, where several good sources exist, they often print the instructions from every one. At some places in the score there is thus an unnatural accumulation of information: each individual score has its own dynamics and tempo relationships some of which loses its point if one set of information is copied overanother. However these errors can easily be corrected: the original, unarranged Strauss is perfekt! The instrumentation cannot be faulted - unfortunately, we can no longer realise it adequately, since bombardons and F trumpets for example are now a thing of the past. The dynarnics and tempo markings do not need any correction. If anything, it is our listening habits that should be changed, for it is perhaps a little strange at first to go without the charming Robert Stolzisms and rediscover the much more genuine, more refined Straussian dialect.