Uploaded February 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago

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My student Lucy and me performing Brahms‘ Hungarian Dance No.1.

Lucy is 12 years old and studies the piano with me for 3 years. Before she learned with another teacher for 1 year. The Hungarian Dance is part of her program of ”Jugend Musiziert“ (Youth makes music) the very famous German music competition. In this video I am playing the part of her partner.

Check out our Beethoven duet from last year: youtu.be/K257u8m-1Zw

Hungarian Dance No.2 with my colleague Jie Zhang: youtu.be/U3qMENHC4Uk

Background:

The Hungarian Dances (German: Ungarische Tänze) by Johannes Brahms (WoO 1), are a set of 21 lively dance tunes based mostly on Hungarian themes, completed in 1879. They vary from about a minute to five minutes in length. They are among Brahms's most popular works and were 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 ten dances for solo piano.

Brahms' Hungarian Dances should be placed in the context of interest in folk music. Both Haydn and Boccherini refer frequently to gypsy music, but in Brahms' day it was Franz Liszt with his Hungarian rhapsodies who was an inspiration to Brahms, both artistically and financially. In 1850 Brahms met the Hungarian violinist Ede Reményi and accompanied him in a number of recitals over the next few years. This was his introduction to "gypsy-style" music such as the csárdás, which was later to prove the foundation of his most lucrative and popular compositions, the two sets of Hungarian Dances (published 1869 and 1880).
Only numbers 11, 14 and 16 are entirely original compositions. The better-known Hungarian Dances include Nos. 1 and 5, the latter of which was based on the csárdás "Bártfai emlék" (Memories of Bártfa) by Hungarian composer Béla Kéler, which Brahms mistakenly thought was a traditional folksong. A footnote on the Ludwig-Masters edition of a modern orchestration of Hungarian Dance No. 1 states: "The material for this dance is believed to have come from the Divine Csárdás (ca. 1850) of Hungarian composer and conductor Miska Borzó."

#Brahms #piano4hands #hungariandance