Kaiser-Walzer, op. 437

Strauss wrote the Kaiser-Walzer in 1889 for the opening of the Königsbau ballrooms in Berlin, where it was first played on 21 October that year. Its original title was Hand in Hand, a reference to a toast Franz Joseph had offered on a visit to Wilhelm II; the publisher Fritz Simrock proposed the imperial title instead, useful because it left open which emperor was meant. The waltz opens not with a dance but with a march-like introduction, and Schoenberg's chamber arrangement of 1925, made for the Society for Private Musical Performances, treated it as a concert work.