Carl Michael Ziehrer was a Viennese light music king whose work enjoyed popularity nearly as great as Johann Strauss II himself, and his waltz Weana Mäd'ln (1888) did become part of the intractable literature of the Viennese Bon Bon. Despite his glittering success and the challenge he put to the sons of Strauss, Ziehrer outlived the golden age of Vienna by nearly a decade and died in poverty, already forgotten. The sheer mass of music he produced before his fortunes changed is astounding; it adds up to about 600 works, of which 22 to 24 were operettas. Conductor
Christian Pollack and the Slovak State Philharmonic assemble a program of the overtures to 11 of Ziehrer's operettas in Marco Polo's Carl Michael Ziehrer: Operetta Overtures. This disc demonstrates that Ziehrer was certainly one of the most interesting composers in the genre; for example, the opening of Der Fremdenführer (The Tourist Guide, 1902) starts with an unpredictable, questing progression with the orchestra swelling in and out of the chords, before suddenly bursting into a graceful, balletic figure. A leaping and bounding dance opens his overture to Der Schätzmeister (The Pawnbroker, 1904) that sounds ethnic, but not specifically Hebraic, and it is clear that characterization was an important component in Ziehrer's music for the stage. Throughout the whole program there are little musical surprises, and in organizing his operetta overtures Ziehrer rapidly shifts gears between musical ideas, never staying too long in one place so that the music gets tiresome.
Although most of the orchestrations are original, in a couple of instances
Pollack has had to reconstruct the orchestral overture from a piano version as the original orchestration has gone wanting -- the difference between
Pollack's work and Ziehrer's is so inconsiderable as to be irrelevant. The performances and recording are both first class, and for those with a taste for Viennese light music, this is not something you will want to miss.