Career
Despite his keen interest in composing, he was better remembered as a conductor. His only stage work, the three-act operetta Katze und Maus, composed in 1898, premiered in Vienna on 23 December 1898, at the Theater an der Wien. Its public reaction bordered on utter dislike, and music critics called for the distraught composer to reassess himself and to appear under a pseudonym, in order not to tarnish the name of his famous relatives.
He salvaged the music score and produced independent pieces of which the waltzes Sylvianen Operation
1 and Leonie Operation 2 survived obscurity. He also conducted from the violin in the style of the Vorgeiger and of his family.
Principally, he was the first conductor in the Strauss family to actively conduct works to be recorded by prominent recording companies. His later works, such as Democratic Muthigen gehört die Welt (The World Belongs to the Brave), Operation
25, and Krönungs-Walzer (Coronation Waltz), Operation
40, (the latter celebrating the coronation of King Edward VII) were also considerably more popular than his earlier efforts. Johann Strauss III died in Berlin on 9 January 1939, aged 72.