Mussorgsky, Nigth on Bald Mountain

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky, born in Karevo, Russia, on March 21, 1839, showed remarkable piano skills from a young age. Although his father was no external to music and his mother played the piano moderately well as an amateur, the little boy had to enter the Cadet School of the Guards in St. Petersburg at the age of thirteen, because in the opinion of his parents his musical talent should not be an impediment to forging a stable future.

Officer and musician
Graduated from the School with the rank of officer, Mussorgsky was faced with a serious nervous breakdown, as the development of his military career required him to move away from Saint Petersburg. In the salons of the city, he had the opportunity to meet various rising musicians: Cui, Borodin and Balakirev (with whom he would later participate, along with Rimski-Kórsakov, in the famous group "Mighty Five"), and had become a disciple of the latter so that leaving the city meant getting away not only from family and friends but also from music.

Cadet Modest Mussorgsky
(1839 -1881)

Leaving the military ranks
The vocational crisis that absorbed him lasted almost two years, until in 1859, at the age of twenty, in a moment of supreme lucidity and commendable sharpness, he decided to come out of the military ranks to devote himself entirely to musical art. Unfortunately, during the next decade, despite being a member in good standing of the aforementioned Mighty Five – formally established in 1862 –, he would be afflicted by new and deep emotional crises, caused by the dire economic situation of his family.

Official and musician
The family crisis forced him to enter a ministry as an administrative employee, where he would remain for no less than fifteen years, taking away thousands of precious hours from creative work. All in all, the end of the decade is a relatively fertile period, in which the tone poem Night on Bald Mountain is created. The years to come will register the birth of the suite Pictures at an Exhibition and, perhaps his most famous work, the opera Boris Godunov.

Night on Bald Mountain - Tone poem
The work is inspired by a Gogol tale relating the experience of a peasant who witnesses a coven on the night of San Juan. It was never published during Mussorgsky's lifetime, and the version that has become popular – the one we heard in the animated film Fantasia in Stokowski's arrangement – corresponds to the orchestral arrangement that his fellow countryman Nicolai Rimski-Kórsakov made of Mussorgsky´s sketches.

The rendition is by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Claudio Abbado.

John Cage, "In a Landscape"

While many pianists from around the world, without lifting a finger, would sit at the piano to give their audience the novel work 4'33'', its author, John Cage, was making an effort to compose a musical piece whose score was going to show in its short pages a cluster of half notes, crotchets, quavers and semiquavers, in the traditional way.

It was 1948 and quite a few years had passed since Cage had taken lessons with Arnold Schoenberg, after which the latter told to the former that he should have a feeling for harmony. Cage answered; "Yes. I have no feeling for harmony". Schoenberg then said: "You will always encounter an obstacle, and that it would be as though you came to a wall through which you could not pass." I said: "In that case, I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.'

In a Landscape

John Cage (1912 - 1992)

So, when some years after he was asked to write the musical accompaniment for the choreographic work "Dream", for the dancer Louise Leopold, the composer recalled the words of maestro Schoenberg and, against all odds, there was no need to beat his head against the wall to give birth to the piece In a Landscape, an unmistakable composition of musical modernism, which incidentally brings to mind the memory of Erik Satie and which was complete to the taste of Louise, the dancer.

The piece, around eight minutes long, was composed for piano or harp.
The rendition, here, is by Israeli pianist Shira Legmann, during a live concert in Boston.

John Cage, 4'33''

The Sounds of Silence

The American avant-garde philosopher, poet, painter, pioneer of aleatory and electronic music, and composer, John Cage, was not the first to invent a musical composition that contained not a single note. Before and after him, there were breakthrough composers who worked on silence as musical material. But undoubtedly, his work titled 4'33 '' is the one that has survived the longest. Furthermore, it is considered his masterpiece, and the most controversial, far surpassing other works that gave silence a leading role.

4'33 ''
The piece, 4 minutes and 33 seconds long – as it will have been noticed – was composed in 1952, It can be played by any instrument or set of instruments, although it was originally conceived to be performed on the piano. Despite its short extension, it is structured in three movements. His score only contains the Latin word "tacet" which is customary to use to indicate to the orchestra musician that his contribution is not required for a considerable period, for example, during a complete movement. In this case, tacet instructs the interpreter to remain silent for four minutes and thirty-three seconds.

John Cage (1912 - 1992)

The music "of the environment"
In Cage's own opinion this was his most important work and with it, he attempted to show that any sound or set of sounds can be music, if we agree. The four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence are intended for the audience to listen to the sounds of the environment while the piece is "performed", sounds that neither the author nor the interpreter nor the audience is in a position to control, which, for true, is an irrefutable truth.

The various versions
There is an online version played on the piano, apparently by John Cage himself, but it is somewhat old and the video is a low-resolution one. The sound, moreover, is poor.
I've preferred to show here an orchestral version with soloist, which Cage devised a few years later due to the enthusiasm that the original piece aroused in the public, a project that meant some good years of work for the composer. As rarely before, at the end of the piece, the audience knew how to keep the overwhelming silence that the end of every musical manifestation requires.

To the benefits already described, 4'33 '' adds an unmatched feature: it can be heard both with and without headphones.

Rossini, "Semiramis" - Overture

Gioachino Rossini not only laid the foundations for the bel canto that would dominate the panorama of Italian opera in the early nineteenth century but was also the one who inaugurated the surprising behaviour adopted by the musicians of his time of getting hold of a mistress older than themselves (his loyal followers will be Franz Liszt, who fell in love with Marie d'Agoult, six years older; and then Chopin and Sand, who was seven years older than her "Chopinski"). Indeed, in 1815, when Chopin was only five years old, and Liszt was only rising above four, the precocious Gioachino, at twenty-three, would find love in the Madrid-born singer Isabella Colbran, seven years older.

Isabella, soprano and mezzo
A high-class soprano and mezzo, at the time of meeting Gioachino –whose comic operas have brought to fame only four years after his career began–, Mme Colbran was a singer whose tessitura and register were the polar opposites of the typical flourishes that, at that stage, the music of Gioachino exhibited. Therefore, she will urge the young composer to work in more serious operas, in order to perform heroines where her voice could display her full potential.

Isabella Colbran (1785 - 1845)

Gioachino fulfilled her wishes as far as possible. Along with a Barbiere, a Cinderella and a Thieving Magpie the young Rossini (blessed are you) wrote for Isabella various dramatic roles specially created for her voice features.

The decline
But as time doesn't pass for nothing, by 1822 the voice of the Colbran had begun to decline. Rossini was forced to adapt the arias to her failing voice, until there was the last opera written for her: the drama in two acts, Semiramis. A year before its premiere they had been married, but the marriage would not be for life as their relationships will always be tangled and thorny. The rupture would come in 1837 when Isabella had spent many years without singing and Rossini turned eight composing absolutely nothing.

Semiramis
The two-act opera Semiramis took its script from Voltaire's tragedy, "Semiramis", based in turn on the legend of Semiramis, queen of Babylon. Premiered at the La Fenice theater, Venice, in February 1823, it is rarely performed today but is survived by its Overture, one of the most beautiful written by Rossini, and the most extensive of all.

The rendition is by the outstanding Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, of which he has been the holder since 2009, and with which he won a Grammy Award in 2012 for the best orchestral performance, with the Symphony No. 4 by Johannes Brahms.

The familiar and overwhelming Rossini's crescendo rehearses a first song at minute 4:10. A second theme begins at 6:00, which will be resumed at 10:30 to lead to the climax and then to a thunderous finale.

Johann Strauss Sr., Radetzky March

Johann Strauss Sr (1804 - 1849)

Johann Strauss Sr. never said to his eponymous son "I hope you will go further than I do" or anything like that. There was no need. Naturally, the son's talent would soon surpass the father's. Thus, the relations within the Strauss Orchestra, founded by Strauss Sr in 1825, would be complicated. To the point that Strauss Jr later decided to create his own orchestra, vying with his father in the battle to gain the favour of the audience, the nascent Viennese bourgeoisie, who in those years was in need of dancing.

The invention of the "Viennese waltz"
Over the years, the son's fame overshadowed that of the father. This reality, however, is petty with Strauss Sr. Although it was his son who in his time earned the title of "the king of the waltz" in Europe, Johann Strauss Sr. was the author of the idea. From the elaboration of simple peasant dances, it was he who managed to introduce a danceable piece in triple time into the halls of Vienna, which until today is known as the "Viennese waltz" and which, of course, the son upscaled. And it was the father who, for the first time, decided to designate the pieces composed with a descriptive title and not simply with a number, so that the son did not need a focus group to decide between The Blue Danube and Vals N ° 7, or 15, or 31.

Joseph Wenzel Radetzky
(1766 - 1858)

Joseph Wenzel, Graf Radetzky
In the exaltation of the waltz, the son performed brilliantly, by the way, but it resulted. unexpectedly. in that only one piece by the creator of the Viennese waltz is heard on today's stages. This is the extraordinarily famous Radetzky March, composed in honor of the Austrian Field Marshal, Joseph Wenzel, Count Radeztky, whose glory at the time would consist in safeguarding Austria's military might during the clashes of 1848-49, in the framework of the Italian independence wars.

The "New Year" March 
The father was far from the brilliance of the son, but his ingenuity was enough for his rightfully famous march to be heard every morning of the first day of January in the Musikverein Hall of Vienna. The Radetzky March is the jubilant piece destined to proudly close the proverbial New Year's Concert in that city.

During the performance of the piece, tradition prescribes that the conductor turns to the audience and invites them to clap out the rhythm. This is what we see the young and remarkable Venezuelan conductor, Gustavo Dudamel, doing on the occasion of a tour of Europe, leading the no less outstanding Venezuelan group, the Simon Bolívar Youth Symphony Orchestra.

Keith Jarret, The Köhln Concert

In 1924, jazzband director Paul Whiteman conducted the premiere of a composition he had requested from George Gerswhin and which was intended to link jazz with classical music. The released piece was Rhapsody in Blue. Twenty-five years later, already retired from the stage, and perhaps sure that he would never again establish relationships with a top-ranking musician, Whiteman had to welcome – in his role as a TV host in a show promoting young talents – a five-year-old boy who played the piano leaving the audience astounded.

Boulanger's invitation
The boy's name was Keith Jarret and he had started studying piano two years earlier. Some time after his first formal performance at age seven playing Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Saint-Saens, an invitation was issued to him. He was invited to Paris to continue studies with the most important music pedagogue of the time, Nadia Boulanger, who had taught Daniel Barenboim and Dinu Lipatti to play the piano, to name just two of his talented students. Keith's mother was delighted with the news, but the adolescent Jarret was beginning to feel more inclined to jazz than to the classics, so he respectfully declined the invitation.

A great improviser
This is how, at twenty years old, we have Keith enjoying life and music in clubs in Boston and New York, in his role as a cocktail pianist. In the latter city, he joined a jazz group and soon after recorded his first compositions. Despite being part of numerous jazz trios and quartets in the seventies, it is also the time when he began to perform alone, just him, his music and his piano. In 1975, a very young seventeen-year-old German businesswoman encouraged him to give a concert with a "repertoire" consisting exclusively of improvisations.

The Köhln Concert
The concert was held at the Köhln Opera House on January 24, with the venue packed with enthusiastic audiences. Almost as enthusiastic as Keith, who at that time gave remarkable samples of his brand, accompanied by murmurs, foot taps on the floor and movements around the bench; as well as his extraordinary ability to improvise, of which it will suffice to note that in this Part I of the concert the pianist stays for twelve minutes improvising on the basis of only two chords: G major and A minor. Then, it takes a breather and "expands" its harmonic base by adding one more chord: A major.

The improvisation, one hour and ten minutes, was recorded in its entirety, and it became, until today, one of the best-selling records of solo piano music in history. A few years ago, and after persistent challenge, Jarret finally agreed to make a transcription of what he played in Cologne and publish it, but with the compulsory advice that what was heard that night has the last word.

Chopin, Étude op 10-3, "Tristesse"

Arriving in Paris in September 1831, Frédéric Chopin saw his first concert in front of the Parisian public amazingly scheduled for three months after his arrival. The recent relationship with his eventual teacher, the German pianist Kalkbrenner, made this possible. Kalkbrenner and nine other musicians were to perform at a group concert in December of that year, and they were kind enough to invite the Polish refugee to join them.

In addition to the works for solo piano, four-hand piano and piano quartet, plus a violinist and an oboist – in accordance with the tradition of the time – a singer was invited too. Her mission was to increase the diversity of timbres, allowing hearing of the human voice. But the singer canceled and the concert was postponed until February 26, 1832, with the singer's replacement by a female vocal trio. Chopin thanks it: "Three graces are worth more than a single goddess", he says, although he would regret it later because now the "bordereau" had to be shared among a greater number of protagonists.

Chopin in the Salle Pleyel
The concert was held in the Pleyel Hall, with its three hundred seats taken. Of course, a good number of them had been distributed among French personalities, although the Polish compatriots flocked. Among the attendees were Félix Mendelssohn and Franz Liszt.
As could be expected, the concert was a financial failure: many artists and not many paid tickets; in short, too many guests. However, Frédérik would see in it a positive balance: although he didn't get a single peso, he is already present in the opinion of Parisians. The Revue Musicale has stated so:
"In Mr Chopin's inspiration there is a renewal of form, no doubt destined to exert a profound influence on the future achievements of works written for the piano."

That same year, 1832, the Études Op 10 were published, dedicated to his young friend Franz Liszt, a year younger than him. If we consider that in his entire life Frédérik received the miserable sum of 17,000 francs for his complete work (the classes, however, will report to him, on average, 14,000 francs a year), the publication of the Études, we suppose, might have lessened the economic constraints of the moment.

Étude Opus 10 No. 3, in E major
Easy in appearance, the étude in E major presents very delicate problems: to the requirement to make all the voices sing in the serene moments, they are added later, in the determined central section, very uncomfortable fingerings (2:49) and bravura passages of double sixths from distant positions (3:05). Then, the piece resumes the initial quiet song and vanish delicately.

The rendition is by the Ukrainian pianist Valentina Lisitsa.

Franz Liszt - Soneto Petrarca 104

The two years spent with the Countess Marie d'Agoult in the quiet peace around Geneva, and the work carried out there, made Franz Liszt the composer and brilliant pianist who would later dazzle entire Europe. In 1838, at the age of twenty-seven, he decided that it was time to embark on the proverbial pilgrimage to Italy and set out there with his inseparable Marie. In Milan he performed at La Scala with a repertoire made up entirely of Beethoven's sonatas, thus inaugurating the monographic recitals, dedicated to a single composer. But the Milanese public was not prepared. They would have listened delightfully to fantasies about Bellini or Donizetti, but not to the Bonn maestro yet. He had died eleven years ago but his music still did not arise admiration of a common audience.

Settled in Rome
So on this first visit to Italy, Liszt was far from provoking the enthusiasm in the audience that would soon be the norm. However, the trip in the company of Marie bore fruit in another sense: Italy, its landscapes and its culture exerted a great attraction on the couple, and at the beginning of 1839, with their two little daughters, Blandine and Cosima, they settled in Rome. They stayed there for ten months, soaking up Italian art and receiving the birth of their third child, a boy.

Marie d'Agoult (1805 - 1876)

The tours, and the breakup
Rome became the center of the musician's operations and from there he undertook tours to practically all European cities. When she was not traveling with him, Marie, a faithful lover, would wait for him longingly and upon his return she would lavish her love without measure, until she learned that there was no tour in which her beloved did not run into a love affair. Franz's indefatigable conduct, sustained for years, eventually led to the couple's breakup in 1844.

Years of pilgrimage
Années de Pelerinage is a set of three piano suites composed by Franz Liszt over a long period, approximately between 1837 and 1877. Franz captured in them the fascination that the landscapes and personal stories experienced in his continuous travels aroused in him. The second suite, entitled "Italia", incorporates revisions of the Tri sonetti del Petrarca, composed around 1839-1846, this time not inspired by landscapes but by reading the sonnets of the Italian poet.

The piece inspired by Sonnet 104 is presented here, performed by pianist Anna Fedorova, born in Kiev, Ukraine, just 23 years ago. (The quality of the video allows you to enjoy it in full screen.)

Cécile Chaminade, "Automme"

French pianist and composer Cécile Chaminade was born in Paris in 1857 to a wealthy arts-loving middle-class family. Her mother sang and played the piano, and naturally, Cécile received the first lessons from her. At an early age she showed her talent and could have entered the Paris Conservatory, but her father, although he was also a music fan, opposed such an adventure for considering it unseemly.

A prolific author
But as the family economic situation allowed it, Cécile took private classes with renowned teachers from the Paris of the time. The girl did not miss the opportunity and at 8 years old she was writing religious music. Ten years later, she would give her first concert, and at twenty she gave recitals performing her own pieces. Throughout her life, Cécile would produce nearly 400 works, including chamber music, piano pieces, an opera, and a ballet. Famous are her melodies, vocal works with piano accompaniment that would be all the rage in the Parisian salons of the time.

Cécile Chaminade (1857 - 1944)

In the U.S.A.
It will be these pieces that will give her the greatest satisfaction. With them, she became known throughout France, England and later in the United States, where she traveled in 1908 reaping overwhelming success and popularity, to the point that a firm whose activity consisted in the manufacture of soaps began to produce them packaged in glamorous boxes that carried her signature. But it is also around this time that the composer who had won Vincent d'Indy's admiration for her Orchestral Suite from 1881 began to waver and her music to be considered vulgar parlor entertainment.


It is alleged that, after her father died, Cécile should have played the role of family provider and, since her greatest successes came from parlor music, she is forced by her publishers to write music that could be sold easily and in "large volumes". Cécile began to write, then, for the consumers' taste.

The turn of the century
On the other hand, it is also true that the author failed to understand the turn of the century. At the beginning of the new century, Cécile continued composing as if romanticism was brimming with health and strength. Forty years after d'Indy's compliments, the songwriter had barely changed her style. And far from trying to adapt to the new century, she confesses to a friend in 1920:

"... I can no longer adapt to modern music, just as I cannot adapt to modern painting, architecture, literature, mentality or morality."

The rebirth of her music
The outbreak and consequences of the First World War had ended up burying Cécile's career as a concert player since her music reflected another time, a kinder one. During her last years, Cécile and her music were forgotten, although from 1994, after the fiftieth anniversary of her death, the composer has enjoyed a rebirth, by the hand of several pianists and chamber groups.

In Rina Cellini's rendition, we listen to the concerto studio "Automme", composed in 1886, performed by the Italian pianist in the privacy of her home.

Heitor Villa-Lobos, Choro No 1, for guitar

Choro ("cry" or "lament") is a Brazilian musical form that probably emerged in the mid-1870s in Rio de Janeiro. Despite its name, it is characterized by an agitated and happy rhythm, requiring great technique and instruments mastery. From the cycle of fifteen choros that the prolific Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos wrote for several instruments, the only guitar composition is the first of all, Choro No. 1.

Like some great composers (Brahms, for example) Villa-Lobos made a living as a young man playing in taverns of his hometown, Rio de Janeiro, where he came into this world in 1887. The son of an amateur musician from whom he received his first lessons, Heitor delighted the parishioners with the cello, although, if circumstances required, he could also play the guitar, clarinet or piano.

The first steps in his musical training take place completely outside the official institutions, about which he did not have a good opinion, to the point of having once expressed: "set foot in the academy and you will change for the worse". According to some scholars, Heitor was the son of an indigenous mother, which would explain his everlasting interest in ethno-musical travel, occasions in which he delved deep into the jungle of the north-eastern states of Brazil to soak up the folk music of those territories.

Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887 - 1959)

However, upon returning from the first of his trips, he enrolled at the National Institute of Music in Rio de Janeiro. But it would be the traditional songs of the Indians of the Amazon jungle that would exert a decisive influence in the conformation of his style, completely separated from academic conventions, and rather oriented to recreate with European-Western instruments the melodies and rhythms that he heard in the Amazon.

In 1915, at the age of 28, he decided to give a concert in Rio with just music of his own authorship, which was not much appreciated due, on the one hand, to the conservatism of the audience and, on the other, to the novelty of his compositions.

However, a few years later, the Brazilian government will award him with a professional improvement scholarship in Paris. Upon his return, he was entrusted with the formation of music education in Rio de Janeiro, with which a second stage in his musical life begins, that of a pedagogue. Together, his music began to receive international recognition. The world will later be amazed by vast work. Around two thousand compositions make up his catalog, among which Choros and Bachianas Brasileiras stand out, as well as concertos for various instruments, symphonies, chamber music, ballet, pieces for piano and many others.

Talented guitarist David Russell plays for us Choro No 1.

Dvorak, Slavonic Dances - No 1 Op 46

Music with a national character sparked on in the mid-19th century after the ideas of Rousseau and other thinkers managed to awaken in European countries a movement of intellectual renewal with a marked nationalism. In the case of the Czechs and Slovaks, the consciousness of national identity was strongly reflected in them when the 1848 Prague uprising broke out against the Habsburg empire, an uprising that was later crushed like most of the same year in not a few European capitals.

An elusive language
By the time, the boy Antonin Dvorak was seven years old and, of course, he still lived in the rural town that had seen him born, a few kilometers from Prague. Five years later, his father, a trader, would send him to a nearby city to learn German, given that the nationalist efforts had not come to fruition. Antonin spent two years trying German unsuccessfully. Finally, he returned without having learned anything, however, his tutor in the language turned out to be also a music teacher, who after appreciating his amazing performance in the dance orchestra he conducted encouraged him to study music seriously.

Antonin Dvorak (1841 - 1904)

Prague and the diploma
Having overcome his father's original rejection, Antonin went to Prague in the autumn of 1857 to enroll in the city's Organ School, where he had to overcome many difficulties, precisely due to his poor command of the German language. In spite of everything, when finishing his studies, the school principal was forced to recognize, when handing him his diploma, the "brilliant talent" that the one who was going to become one of the most outstanding representatives of the Czech nationalist school, had shown.

Slavonic Dances
The year 1878 finds Dvorak turned on an acclaimed composer, encouraged by musicians of the standing of Leos Janacek and Brahms. The latter introduced him to his own editor, who after publishing his successful Moravian Duets, suggested to Antonin to compose some dances of a similar style. The result was the Slavonic Dances, opus 46, to be followed years later by those of opus 72. Both works form a cycle of sixteen dances, among which melodies based on Czech and Slavic folk dances with vernacular names predominate.

Dance No. 1 of Opus 46, a "furiant", performed by the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by the Japanese maestro Zeiji Ozawa, shortly before going bald.

Verdi - La Traviata - "Addio del passato"

La Fenice Theater, in Venice, was the stage that hosted the premiere of the opera in three acts La Traviata, by Giuseppe Verdi, on March 6, 1853. The premiere was an absolute failure, mainly because the singer who embodied Violeta, the consumptive protagonist, was quite overweight, which provoked ridicule from the audience. In the last act, there was even laughter, because after the doctor announced that Violeta had only a few hours to live, she, audacious, continued singing, just like that.

Before the premiere, and knowing that the diva was also 38 years old, Giuseppe –for those years a celebrity in Italy– had commissioned his librettist, Francesco Piave, to notify the manager of the Theater that the role of Violeta demanded imperiously "a singer with an elegant figure who must sing passionately." The mission, unfortunately, was unsuccessful. Fortunately, the following year, with another diva in the leading role, the opera received the accolades it deserved, from the public and critics.

Addio del passato
The aria Addio del passato is sang, precisely, in the third act. Violeta is alone in her room, next to her sickbed and reads a letter that the father of her beloved Alfredo has sent her, announcing Alfredo's visit. But, as Violeta exclaims ... "e 'tardi". The aria ends with a prayer that asks God for mercy, a dramatic moment when Violeta refers to herself as "la traviata", the wayward one, an expression that ended up giving the opera its title.

The rendition is by Los Angeles Opera, 2006, with Renée Fleming in the role of Violeta. The aria begins at minute 1:40. Before, Violeta reads the letter while the orchestra quotes Violeta and Alfredo's duet from the first act, Croce e Delizia. We have chosen the rendition of the beautiful Renée because she is the only one of the current sopranos who undertake the last note of the aria with a tinny voice, which is, in the opinion of this humble narrator, the right approach.

Johann Strauss - Tritsch Tratsch Polka

Johann Strauss Sr., whose name we remember as the author of the Radetzki March, warned his many children, at an early age, that dedication to music was a very risky and unstable activity, despite the fact that Strauss Sr. was quite a celebrity in Vienna, a position he had achieved thanks to the intense work done with the orchestra that he himself had formed.

But the older son ignored the father's warning. Johann Strauss junior (1825 - 1899), was barely a teenager when he was already a capable violinist, showing, in addition, great ability to conduct orchestras. So much so, that at age 19 he had his own, rivalling his father's orchestra to win the Viennese public´s favour. He had also begun to compose, although in his first performances much of his repertoire was due to his father.

The new orchestra
After the latter died in 1849, Johann did not delay in uniting the two rival orchestras and with the new group he soon became an undisputed champion in the Viennese dance halls, which he will repeat later in the other European capitals. As he also added to his musical talent great business skills and an impressive facility for networking at the highest levels, his fame wasted no time in reaching Russia.

The ultimate success
In 1856 he was asked to offer a series of concerts in Saint Petersburg, invited by a group of businessmen from the nascent Russian bourgeoisie, interested in participating in the festivities that the aristocracy enjoyed. The tour was a success and very well paid. The lucrative contact lasted about ten years, during which period Johann Strauss Jr. amassed a considerable fortune.

"Tritsch Tratsch" polka 
It was composed shortly after returning from Russia. Much celebrated in its time, even today it is a fixed number every year at the New Year's concert in Vienna. The origin of its strange name still divides scholars.

The first video shows the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Zubin Mehta, in an open-air performance at Heldenplatz. Very happy, and very agile, the piece lasts just under three minutes.

There is also a sung version. Following, the Vienna Boys' Choir on the occasion of the 2012 New Year's Concert.