# Johann Strauss II



## May

Johann Strauss is perhaps my top favourite composer! I especially love his waltzes, they are simply superb!
These are a few of them, enjoy!  (The blue Danube, Kaiser-Waltz or The Emperor Waltz, Roses from the South, Wiener Blut, Tales from the Vienna woods, Lagunen-Walzer, etc.


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## May

Roses from the South, Lagoon Waltz and Kaiser-Waltz


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## Sid James

I am a fan, have been for a long while, I did this thread on him a while ago:
http://www.talkclassical.com/7159-johann-strauss-ii.html
...but since then I don't mind Andre Rieu's interps of Strauss, but the originals are the best, even though Rieu's arrangments are more kind of modern (eg. he throws in things like piano).

Of course his music is fun but its much more than that. The 2nd Viennese School where admirers of his music and did chamber arrangements of his works. Strauss was a master of theme and variations form. Each waltz of his has the theme and a set of variations (5 or 6 I think), then the coda. There's also how J. Strauss II was a cultivated man, a man who liked both of Brahms' and Bruckner's music (which given the turf wars going on in Vienna between cliques of those two must have been somewhat of a rare thing), and of course that famous anecdote where Brahms praised _The Blue Danube _waltz and said he would have liked to have composed it.

Ravel also paid homage to him in _La Valse_, but of course this is more a reflection on the dissilution of the Habsburg Empire and teh ancien regime in the 1910's decade, its not a simple homage. But I'd guess Ravel liked Strauss' music - you got _Valses nobles et sentimentales_ for example. You also got others around that time, eg. Richard Strauss with the suites of waltzes from _Rosenkavalier _ and others like Zemlinsky going back to draw inspiration from him. Not to speak of Lehar, Kalman and other operetta composers all influenced by Strauss' efforts in the genre, whose golden age kind of passed with the end of the 1910's decade.


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## sharik

his operetta Die Fledermaus is awesome.


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## christomacin

Here's something you don't hear every day - The Tritsch-Tratsch Polka played by accordions! Suitably weird video too:





Here's a nicely arranged Strauss waltz medley:


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## Alkan

Let's face it. Strauss was one of the best melodists ever. Possibly surpassed by Tchaikovsky and Schubert, but few others if any.


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## Rogerx

Alkan said:


> Let's face it. Strauss was one of the best melodists ever. Possibly surpassed by Tchaikovsky and Schubert, but few others if any.


5 posts in 5 years would state otherwise, I agree with you though, wonderful music.


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