My dark and shadowy piano Intermezzi are followed by these Zirkustänze [circus dances]. They are naturally – on a superficial level – simpler, more cheerful, brighter and also more garish, drastic and playful than my previous composition, but my objective in these dances involving the protagonists of a circus is a simple but profound and omnipresent truth: there is a constant real danger that the tightrope walker will fall. On the subject of our childlike amazement as an observer: it is not our ...