‘On Tuesday evening the Medical Students’ Ball was held in the elegant and newly decorated rooms of the Sofiensaal establishment,’ the Vienna daily Neues Fremden-Blatt reported two days later, on Thursday 24 January 1867, and went on, ‘Joseph Strauss played an enchanting waltz, which was greeted with much applause and has already been published by Spina.’ ‘To the gentlemen students of medicine at the University of Vienna’ is the dedication which can be found on the title page of the piano edition of the new waltz. The term ‘delirium’ (‘Delirien’ is the plural form in German) is used to refer to a form psychosis with disorders of consciousness and orientation, sometimes with delusions. Such an acute psychic disorder can have organic causes, or be the result of drugs being consumed or withdrawn. Josef Strauss begins his new composition with an introduction which is completely atypical of previous Viennese waltzes: it is melancholy music which is struggling for freedom, which takes its direction from Richard Wagner’s art of instrumentation. The music is driven along for twenty-seven bars in 12/8 time, an ‘allegro maestoso’ with a nervous tremolo and frequent modulations as well as a series of diminished seventh chords, and in it there is a pathological component to be heard which certainly does justice to the title. In the spring and summer of 1867 the Viennese music publisher Carl Anton Spina quickly brought out an edition for piano solo and then one for piano duet, followed by an arrangement for violin and piano and, of course, the orchestral parts. Josef Strauss’s waltz Delirien is one of his best and most popular compositions, not least because of its introduction, a stroke of genius that places the work far above the reason why it was composed, that is to provide dance music for the medical students’ ball.
Thursday, 27. January 197218.30 o' clock Hiroshima ⁄ Shimin Kaikan
Concert in Okayama Second Japan tour
Willi Boskovsky conductor
Program Johann Strauss II : Ouverture zu «Prinz Methusalem» Johann Strauss II : Demolishers Polka / Polka française op. 269 Josef Strauss : Eingesendet / Polka schnell op. 240 Josef Strauss : Delirien / Waltz op. 212 Josef Strauss : Chatterboxes: musical joke / Polka op. 245 Johann Strauss II : Fledermaus-Quadrille op. 363 Johann Strauss II : Eljen A Magyar! « Long Live the Magyar!» / Quick polka op. 332 Break Johann Strauss II : Voices of Spring / Waltz op. 410 Carl Milloecker : Postscriptum / Polka Mazurka Franz von Suppè : Fatinitza March Johann Strauss II : Roses from the South / Waltz op. 388 Johann Strauss II : Magic Bullets / Polka schnell op. 326 Johann Strauss II : New Pizzicato Polka, from the Operetta «Fürstin Ninetta» op. 449 Eduard Strauss I : Non-Stop / Quick polka op. 112 Johann Strauss II : Tales from the Vienna Woods / Waltz op. 325 Encore Johann Strauss I : Radetzky March op. 228
Hiroshima ⁄ Shimin Kaikan 〒 Hiroshima Japan
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