Bilse: Waltzes - Marches - Polkas

»Your name graces Berliner Symphoniker nicely, / You highly honored Bilse! / And so we congratulate you thricely: / Johanna, Grete, and Ilse. « A composer whose name was celebrated in public in such rhymed tributes must have been a popular fellow. And Benjamin Bilse, the conductor of the Bilse Orchestra in Berlin, was indeed a popular fellow if there ever was one. When he left Berlin in 1885 to retire to Liegnitz, riots were feared, and police forces were kept in readiness just in case. Bilse was an all-around musical talent, and one of the best conductors and orchestra leaders in Germany – with his orchestra later becoming the Berlin Philharmonic. He was also a gifted composer of rousing marches, sprightly polkas, and yearning waltzes placing him in a class with Strauß, Labitzky, and Lumbye. He was on very close terms with the Prussian royal family, which later became the German imperial house, and dedicated most of his peppy tunes to its members. Some of his martial titles certainly owed their composition to these ties, and works such as the »Storm March-Galop« and »Bombs and Grenades« demonstrate that he was the equal of the Viennese waltz king – his Prussian counterpart