Round Dances in Vienna

Abstract Ernst von Dohnányi (1877–1960), the Hungarian composer and pianist, was usually described as a remarkably harmonious, easy-going, and resilient person by his contemporaries. At the same time, however, he was emotionally withdrawn, so we know very little about how he adapted to different life situations. An excellent example of this is the short period he spent in Vienna in his twenties (1901–1905) which his first biographer Bálint Vázsonyi depicted as an idyllic period, in which Dohnányi “enjoyed the artistic society of Vienna, the family home in which he was surrounded by two beautiful children and he composed a lot.” Following a more critical interpretation of the sources and the unearthing of their hidden references, this popular interpretation proves to be slightly flawed. It seems that Dohnányi reacted very sensitively to the seething public mood in Vienna at the turn of the century, and he himself went through a deep personal-creative crisis. This study presents the author's experience of Vienna in connection with his piano cycle Winterreigen (op. 13, 1905–1906), composed for his Viennese friends, and shows how this experience haunted him even when he lived there again as a political refugee for a short time in 1945–1946 – when Vienna appeared for him not as a possible home in Central Europe but rather as the last bastion of the “West” against the advancing “East,” the Soviet army.