"This summer my orchestra is superb. Everybody is delighted with it, I was no less happy with the pieces composed here, that is: 1. Alexandrine-Polka 2. Erinnerung an Nizza, dedicated to the Empress 3. Cäcilien-Polka dedicated to the bridal couple”.
Johann Strauss wrote these lines to his Viennese publisher, Carl Haslinger, at the end of July 1857, some two and a half months after the commencement of his second summer season of concerts at the Vauxhall Pavilion in Pavlovsk near St. Petersburg. The waltz Erinnerung an Nizza was published both in St. Beersburg and in Vienna with the amended title Souvenir de Nizza, in accordance with the vogue for the French language, and bears the composer’s dedication: “In deepest reverence to her Majesty Maria Alexandrovna, Empress of Russia etc”. Maria Alexandrovna (1824–1880), the consort of Tsar Alexander II, had been born Princess Maximiliane Wilhelmine Marie of Hesse-Darmstadt, daughter of Grand Duke Ludwig II of Hesse, and was the dedicatee of an earlier Strauss waltz, Krönungslieder Op. 184, dating from Johann’s first Pavlovsk season in 1856.
Not until the 1858 carnival was the waltz Souvenir de Nizza introduced to the Viennese public, when Johann unveiled it on 8 February at the Strauss Benefit Ball in the Sofienbad-Saal, an event advertised as a “Grand Ball” with an “interesting gift” from Carl Haslinger for all the ladies attending—apparently a golden hydrangea. Johann had been quite deliberately calculating in choosing to hold back the first Viennese performance of Souvenir de Nizza until his benefit evening. As the Wiener Theaterzeitung proclaimed on 6 February 1858:
“The Strauss Benefit Balls have always been amongst the most popular and most animated of the Carnival. Each time they bring so much that is amusing, and grant special pleasure both to the passionate dancer and to the passive observer, for Strauss is well known as an excellent organiser of festivals”. On the night of the Sofienbad-Saal entertainment, Johann alternated with his brother Josef in conducting the Strauss Orchestra and, as the Wiener Theaterzeitung (12.02.1858) wrote, “although only 14 dances were announced on the programme, these were augmented to thirty by means of repeats. In particular the new waltz ‘Souvenir de Nizza’, dedicated to her Majesty the Empress of Russia, had to be played six times”. The paper was also able to report that on the day after the ball, when Haslinger published Souvenir de Nizza, over 300 copies of the new work were sold. Johann’s gamble had paid off.
Despite the generally carefree atmosphere of the 1858 Vienna Carnival, Johann Strauss had found himself under attack from some quarters because of a composition he had written for the ball of the Vienna Artists’ Association, “Hesperus”, held in the Sofienbad-Saal on 2 February. The dance, the Künstler-Quadrille, was condemned by the journalist Leopold Alexander Zellner as “artistic blasphemy”, since it comprised an arrangement of music by such masters as Chopin, Mozart and Beethoven. Yet, in his article in the Blätter für Musik (12.02.1858), Zellner was guick to defend the young composer against other criticism being directed at him because of his attempts to extend the accepted boundaries of waltz composition through the introduction of such innovations as daring new harmonics. “What then is specifically the charge laid at the compositions of Strauss?”, he asked. “Nothing else but that he did not stop where one was twenty years ago… The motivation for this crime he is accused of sounds even more piquant. He is using all these topical artistic remedies to mask his disappearing inventiveness. Now, if that is the case, Herr Strauss probably composed his latest waltz, ‘Souvenir à Nizza’, a long time ago before his well of melodies dried up, as it is full of original, flowing and racy motifs”.
Painting: Hermann Schmidt - View of the Promenade des Anglais, Nice (1893)
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