Joana Mallwitz
Francesco Piemontesi Sergei Rachmaninoff
Maurice Ravel

In 1909, Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) traveled on his first US tour. He brought along a newly written piece—Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor. He was the soloist at the premiere in New York, not knowing that he would emigrate to the US nine years later after the Russian Revolution.

Piano Concerto No. 3 opens with a simple, melancholic melody, but during the next 45 minutes, the soloist must master some of the most spectacular music ever written for the piano. Few pianists tried it in the first years, but it gradually became more popular and performed. 

“I cannot imagine a more lively, problematic, human, artistically poignant and, in the best sense, dramatic figure … Mathis placed himself at the service of the powerful machinery of state and church and was apparently able to resist the pressures of the institutions.” 

These are the words Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) used to describe the Renaissance painter Matthias Grünewald, who inspired him to write a symphony and an opera with the title Mathis der Maler. The symphony is based on Grünewald’s most famous artwork, the Isenheim Altarpiece.

Both artists bore witness to great upheavals - Grünewald lived through the German Peasants’ War in the 1520s, Hindemith during the rise of Nazism. Hindemith’s radical musical style, his provocative statements, and his wife’s Jewish background put him in a gradually more difficult position.

In line with social developments, Hindemith in Mathis der Maler took a step in a more traditional direction, with elements of German folk tunes and music that may send the mind to Brahms and Wagner. The symphony was a great success with the public at its premiere in Berlin in 1934. 

”Through whirling clouds, waltzing couples may be faintly distinguished. The clouds gradually scatter: one sees (...) an immense hall peopled with a whirling crowd. The scene is gradually illuminated. The light of the chandeliers bursts forth (...) in an imperial court, about 1855.”

This is the introduction Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) wrote in the sheet music for La Valse. Already in 1906, he started on a tribute to Vienna, the waltz, and the “waltz king” Johann Strauss Jr.. La Valse premiered in Paris in the fall of 1920 as a standalone orchestral work. 

The recently ended World War I ended Vienna as the capital of a great empire. In Ravel, the waltz undergoes an extreme transformation that ends in a breakdown. Many in the audience experienced the play as a description of the demise of pre-war culture.