Johann Strauss II suffered his share of failures amongst his shimmering successes. His operetta, Blindekuh (Blind Man's Bluff), opened at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna in December 1878, and closed a mere 16 performances later. To be fair, it was the librettist Rudolf Kneisel's clumsy adaptation of his play of the same name, rather than the music, which was generally considered the downfall of the work.

In any case, Johann II was never one to languish in despair. Barely had the curtain fallen on the final performance of his short-lived operetta when he arranged five orchestral pieces from some of its finest melodies. These became popular in their own right and were often performed thereafter by the Strauss Orchestra.

Among these arrangements was the cheerful waltz Kennst du mich? (Do You Know Me?), whose title was drawn from the melody's original lyrics in the operetta. The piece was given its first performance in January 1879 in Vienna's Musikverein building. The lovely opening waltz strain, which begins softly in the flutes and gently extends into the strings, is originally from the finale to Act II, and may sound familiar to those who know it from Ralph Benatsky's reworking of it in the "Nuns' Chorus" of his 1928 operetta Casanova.

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