I have mentioned in this blog before how I sometime leave the IPOD on random and see what comes up. This popped out a few days ago and I thought that I would share it. But more than that it got me thinking about composers for whom I have precisely one track on my IPOD.
This is a gorgeous piece of nostalgic delight by Alphons Czibulka (there are various spellings) who was an Hungarian bandmaster and composer of operettas. He was obviously very prolific as this is opus 356!
Richard Bonynge knows exactly how to bring off a piece like this. He obviously enjoys the charm and sentimentality but he doesn't milk it for all it is worth. It takes great musicianship and technique to perform light music as elegantly as this,
I doubt that many readers will have heard of Czibulka, but I would be prepared to put quite a lot of money on a wager that everybody reading this will recognise at least one of his melodies. The "hearts and flowers" melody so often used as an accompaniment to love scenes in the silent movies is based on a song by Czibulka! Whether that is how he would like to have achieved immortality in that way is a moot point, but at least he has left a thumb print on musical and cinema history.
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