Concert in Saitama

Johann Strauss II
Town and Country / Polka mazurka
op. 322 (1868)

In 1867 Johann Strauss II, accompanied by his wife Jetty, made his only visit to Great Britain, when he was engaged to conduct the dance music at that season's Promenade Concerts in the Royal Italian Opera House, Covent Garden. If the visit was a personal triumph for Johann -- after his final appearance he wrote in his diary: "The most beautiful concert of my career!" -- it must have been deeply nostalgic for Jetty. London audiences still remembered with great affection her highly successful début in 1849, when she had performed alongside Johann Strauss the Eider -- her husband's late father. Probably through friends Jetty had made during this earlier visit, the couple resided in the rural outskirts of London, rather than in the capital itself, during their 1867 sojourn. Johann delighted so greatly in this life-style that, immediately upon his return to Vienna, he purchased a villa in the Viennese suburb of Hietzing, opposite the botanical gardens of Schönbrunn Palace. Writing on 19 October 1868, Jetty informed a friend: "Johann has bought a small house here, so really nice and comfortable that we imagine we are living in dear Albion [England]". (The building is still to be seen at No. 18 Maxinggasse, and is now generally known as the 'Fledermaus-Villa' since it was here that Strauss composed the world-famous operetta).

The contrast between rural and city life also left its mark on Johann's music, and appears to have inspired him to the polka-mazurka he wrote for an English-style promenade concert which he organised for 12 January 1868 in the spacious Blumen-Säle (Floral Halls) of the Wiener Gartenbaugesellschaft (Vienna Horticultural Society) on the Ringstrasse. In the event Johann's illness enforced the postponement of the concert for one week until 19 January, when the new work, Stadt und Land, was accorded an enthusiastic welcome by those attending the charity concert given in aid of the city's crèche. The piece also proved popular with audiences in Pavlovsk the following year when Johann introduced it at the Vauxhall Pavilion on 15 May 1869 (= 3 May, Russian calendar), and it was issued by Strauss's Russian publisher as Vilanella [Country Girl] Polka- Mazurka.

Johann Strauss II. Town and Country / Polka mazurka op. 322
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