Now that I’ve decided that Joseph Haydn is one of my favorite composers, and I firmly believe that I can have no more than three favorite composers, I have had to sadly relegate Richard Strauss to the position of number two in my hierarchy of composers (with, of course, Beethoven and Wagner remaining securely alongside Haydn in my affections in position number one).
To make up for the demotion I thought I ought to offer a Strauss work, one that’s not too well known.
After the Great War had ravaged Europe, Strauss decided he wanted to put together a gay confection both to prove that he still had the requisite lightness of touch after composing music dramas filled with psychological symbolism with Hugo von Hofmannsthal and to distract the Viennese audiences from their post-war trauma.
The result was his Schlagobers ballet, named for the Austrian luscious form of whipped cream.
He devised the libretto to the ballet himself, borrowing shamelessly from Chaikovsky’s Nutcracker. I mean, if you’re gonna steal, why not steal from the best. Right?
Alas, things didn’t work out quite the way he had hoped, and he didn’t achieve the success he was after.
His biographer Norman Del Mar wrote, “The impression left by this early display of unrestrained flamboyance is one of bewilderment coupled with an element of distaste.”
Whew! With biographers like that, who needs critics?
The first performance of Schlagobers took place in the Vienna State Opera on 9th May 1924 as part of a Strauss Festival held in honour of the composer’s 60th birthday. Strauss himself conducted and all the auguries seemed set for a resounding success. To Strauss’s chagrin the work was not well received, nor has it since found much favour with ballet companies. It was perhaps tactless to stage a work on so opulent a subject amidst the austerity of post-war Austria, and this, together with the disastrous inflation, lay behind the none too friendly nickname given to the work—‘Milliardenballett’ [billionaire’s ballet].
Twenty years later there was a proposal to make a film from it, but this scheme Strauss sourly opposed. A shortened Suite of detachable movements was arranged by cutting down scores and orchestral parts for the purpose, but was never officially published. At least some of the better movements have been more widely played and even recorded as a result, but the ballet as a whole remains one of Strauss’s least known stage works.
No question it’s one of Strauss’s lesser works, but Del Mar was writing during a period when Strauss’s reputation was in decline, and perhaps he was being a bit too harsh on the minor works of Strauss so that his fulsome praise of Strauss’s major works would be taken more seriously. Whatever.
In recent decades Strauss’s reputation has risen and even though Schlagobers will never be uttered in the same breath as Nutcracker, it still has some attractive music.
In this concert performance of the suite from the ballet by Jacek Kaspszyk and the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, if you don’t feel like sampling the whole sweet, I mean suite, try skipping to 18:07 for the Schlagoberswalzer (Whipped Cream Waltz). By the way this video is unlisted on YouTube, meaning it doesn’t show up on searches; you have to know that it’s there. Yet another benefit you get from reading my blog.
00:37 In der Konditorküche: Marsch (In the Confectioner’s Shop: March / W pracowni cukierniczej: Marsz)
04:23 Tanz der Teeblüte (Dance of the Tea Leaves / Taniec herbacianych listków)
09:53 Tanz des Kaffees. Träumerei (Coffee Dance. Nocturne / Taniec kawy. Marzenie)
18:07 Schlagoberswalzer (Whipped Cream Waltz / Walc bitej śmietany)
24:56 Tanz der Prinzessin. Walzer (Princess‘s Dance. Waltz / Taniec księżnej. Walc)
33:38 Tanz der kleinen Pralinees. Springtanz der Knallbonbons. Galopp (Dance of the Small Pralines. Cracker Dance. Galop/Taniec pralinek. Skoczny taniec strzelających cukierków. Galop)
38:15 Menuett. Pas de deux
43:47 Finale: Allgemeiner Tanz (General Dance / Taniec ogólny)
51:03 Credits