Hungarian Dance

Violin: Hungarian Dance Composer: Johannes Brahms Rebecca Lin 2010 Winter In USA

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Hungarian Dances
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Hungarian Dances by Johannes Brahms (WoO 1), are a set of 21 lively dance tunes based mostly on Hungarian themes, completed in 1869.

Only numbers 11, 14 and 16 are entirely original compositions. In fact, number 5 was based on the csárdás by Kéler Béla titled "Bártfai emlék" which Brahms mistakenly thought was a traditional folksong. They vary from about a minute to four minutes in length. They are among Brahms' most popular works, and were certainly the most profitable for him. Each dance has been arranged for a wide variety of instruments and ensembles.

Brahms originally wrote the version for piano four-hands and later arranged the first 10 dances for solo piano. The most famous Hungarian Dance is No. 5 in F♯ minor (G minor in the orchestral version).

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Johannes Brahms
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Johannes Brahms (7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897), was a German composer and pianist, one of the leading musicians and a towering figure of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene. In his lifetime, Brahms's popularity and influence were considerable; following a comment by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow, he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the Three Bs.

Brahms composed for piano, chamber ensembles, symphony orchestra, and for voice and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he gave the first performance of many of his own works; he also worked with the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim. Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. Brahms, an uncompromising perfectionist, destroyed many of his works and left some of them unpublished.

Brahms was at once a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is firmly rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Baroque and Classical masters. He was a master of counterpoint, the complex and highly disciplined method of composition for which Bach is famous, and also of development, a compositional ethos pioneered by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Brahms aimed to honour the "purity" of these venerable "German" structures and advance them into a Romantic idiom, in the process creating bold new approaches to harmony and melody. While many contemporaries found his music too academic, his contribution and craftsmanship have been admired by subsequent figures as diverse as the progressive Arnold Schoenberg and the conservative Edward Elgar. The diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahms's works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers.