Oscar Straus - Piano Concerto; Serenade (Oliver Triendl; Ernst Theis)

Information

Composer: Oscar Straus

• (01) Piano Concerto in B minor
• (04) Reigen-Walzer (arr. Franz Marszalek)
• (05) Serenade for String Orchestra in G minor, Op. 35
• (10) Tragant-Walzer nach Motiven des Tanzspiels 'Die Prinzessin von Tragant'

Oliver Triendl, piano
Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern
Ernst Theis, conductor

Date: 2020
Label: cpo
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/oscar-straus-klavierkonzert/hnum/8992779

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Review

I guess I am not alone in being unaware of a piano concerto by Oscar Straus. It was written either in 1898 (when Straus was in his late twenties) or five years earlier, before the rupture with his teacher, Max Bruch. No one seems sure. As you would expect from one of the most successful of Viennese operetta composers, the concerto is charming, tuneful, expertly orchestrated and, in fact, everything you would expect from a Romantic piano concerto, certainly strong enough to have been included in Hyperion’s eponymous series.

Though cast in the dark key of B minor, the work is far from dark in character. The opening movement’s first subject might seem unpromising but Straus makes good and varied use of it, much as Bruch might have done, though he would certainly not have approved of the Lisztian linking of the three movements, that between the first and second achieved by a somewhat laborious and dutiful cadenza. After the brief (4'21"), elegiac second movement comes a rollicking finale, a real foot-tapper which will doubtless be taken up by those classical stations that like to pay single movements of works. Oliver Triendl plays the solo part with tremendous flair and conviction, while Ernst Theis and his players seem completely and enjoyably attuned to Straus’s idiom.

As, indeed, they are in the arrangement that follows of arguably his most famous piece, Reigen-Walzer, better known to English-speaking audiences as the waltz theme written for La ronde, Max Ophüls’s 1950 film based on Arthur Schnitzler’s play Reigen, one of those ‘I know the tune but not the title’ numbers.

The Serenade for string orchestra is another work from the 1890s. Listening blind, one might think it by an English or maybe Norwegian composer: light textures, folk-song idiom and catchy melodies (especially the fifth and final movement, alla marcia) rather in the manner of Edward German or Haydn Wood. Finally come the delightful four short waltzes Straus wrote for a 1913 one-act ballet, Die Prinzessin von Tragant.

Good sound engineering and, all in all, a good sound buy for anyone wanting to investigate this great light-music composer. It’s just a pity, with an overall timing of 58'27", that no one thought to top up the disc with, perhaps, an arrangement of Straus’s most popular operetta number, ‘My hero’ from The Chocolate Soldier.

-- Jeremy Nicholas, Gramophone

More reviews:

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2020/Aug/Straus-PC-5552802.htm
https://www.classical-music.com/reviews/concerto/o-straus-piano-concerto-reigen-walzer-etc/

https://www.amazon.com/Piano-Concerto-Serenade-Oliver-Triendl/dp/B089M1D84F

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Oscar Straus (6 March 1870 – 11 January 1954) was a Viennese composer of operettas, film scores, and songs, as well as about 500 cabaret songs, chamber music, and orchestral and choral works. He studied under Max Bruch in Berlin, then went back to Vienna and began writing operettas, becoming a serious rival to Franz Lehár. In 1939, following the Nazi Anschluss, he fled to Paris, then to Hollywood. After the war, he returned to Europe and settled at Bad Ischl. Straus' best-known works are Ein Walzertraum (A Waltz Dream), and The Chocolate Soldier (Der tapfere Soldat).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Straus_(composer)

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Oliver Triendl (born 1970 in Mallersdorf, Bavaria) is a German pianist. He studied with Rainer Fuchs, Karl-Heinz Diehl, Eckart Besch, Gerhard Oppitz and Oleg Maisenberg, and is winner of several national and international competitions. As a soloist as well as a chamber musician, Triendl established himself in recent years as an extremely versatile artist, with about 100 CD recordings demonstrate his commitment to the unknown repertoire of the classical, romantic and contemporary music. In 2006 he founded the International Chamber Music Festival “Classix Kempten” in Kempten, Bavaria.

https://www.oliver-triendl.com/english/index.php

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Ernst Theis (born 31 July 1961) is an Austrian conductor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Theis

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