With its procession of love, the supernatural and the pact with the devil, the old myth of Faust, revived in Germany by Goethe and Lenau, had what it took to seduce the Romantics. Liszt seized on it several times, notably in this Mephisto-Valse in which the devil takes his violin to carry Faust away in a frenzied dance.

A curious mixture of Basque elements mixed with jazz, serene classicism and disheveled music, Ravel's Concerto in G major won the support of pianists and the fervour of the public from its creation without ever experiencing an eclipse. Tchaikovsky speaks in the first person in his Symphony No. 4 in F minor which expresses his doubts, his unhappiness and his revolt better than literature could since music expresses itself beyond words. It is a tormented work evoking the irrevocable part of destiny that awaits every human being, this fatum so omnipresent in the Russian soul.