Fin de Siècle

Music at the close of the 19th century signaled the end of an era. Ravel’s La Valse depicts the disintegration of the traditional Viennese waltz, while Brahms’s profound clarinet trio, composed at the end of his life, foreshadowed the end of Romanticism. The fascinating and opulent Suite by Korngold written in pre-war Austria envelops us in Viennese decadence, an aesthetic severed by World War II. Korngold was later to become one of the creators and giants of the “Hollywood sound.”