Kadi-Quadrille, Op. 25 - Josef Strauss

On 29th August 1856, the opera Der Kadi by Ambroise Thomas (1811-1896) was performed for the first time in the Royal and Imperial Opera House located at the Kärntnertor. The leading Viennese theatre already had a work in its repertoire that had been first staged there on 3rd January 1847 under the title Le caïd. Josef Strauss was prepared for the Viennese première of the French opera, and as early as 9th August 1856 he presented his Kadi-Quadrille at Sperl’s Establishment. In the concert announcements of the Strauss orchestra, however, the work appeared after the rather successful performance of the opera Der Kadi in the Theatre at the Kärntnertor, that is, in September 1856. First it had been announced for 10th September in the Volksgarten. Then the invitation to a charity concert of the Strauss Orchestra planned for 15th September in the Volksgarten appeared on 12th September in the Fremden-Blatt. Therefore, the artistic environment into which the Kadi-Quadrille was integrated was important. Josef Strauss announced that he would perform the "Prelude, Wedding Chorus and March from the opera Lohengrin by Richard Wagner" (the opera was then still unknown in Vienna), and, in order to "honour the presence of Dr Franz Liszt," his symphonic poem Mazeppa (which also had yet to be played). The newspaper Der Wanderer published this invitation for a second time on 14th September and added the sentences: "This very interesting music programme and the talented and prolific conductor Josef Strauss’s general popularity lead us to expect an extraordinary reception." As can be seen from other reports, Franz Liszt did indeed attend this concert and spoke favourably about the performance by Strauss’s orchestra of his difficult symphonic poem. Since during this time there were no concerts of the Vienna Philharmonic, and the number of events at the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna was reduced owing to renovations, Josef Strauss took the opportunity to include operatic and symphonic works in the repertoire of the orchestra led by him, winning a privileged position among the orchestras active in Vienna. The Kadi-Quadrille, however, remained in the repertoire of the Strauss orchestra only for a short time, before it disappeared into the archives. When the skilled conductor Ernst Reiterer (1851-1923), some thirty years after Josef Strauss’s death, arranged the operetta Frühlingsluft (Spring Air) from compositions written by Strauss, he remembered the Kadi-Quadrille and transformed the second part of the finale by changing the rhythm to that of a fashionable dance imported from America at the turn of the century, a cakewalk.

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Painting: Le caïd d'Ambroise Thomas
Artist: Charles Bour

Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra, Kosice
Manfred Mússauer