Hartford Symphony Orchestra - Brahms' Third - Hungarian Dance No. 5 in G minor (1869)

Hungarian Dance No. 5 in G minor (1869)

World Premiere: Published 1869
Last HSO Performance: November 13, 2016
Instrumentation: flute, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani and strings
Duration: 2 minutes

Johannes Brahms

The special affection that Brahms retained throughout his life for Gypsy fiddlers and their music blossomed in such Gypsy-inspired compositions as the finale of the Violin Concerto, the closing movement of the G minor Piano Quartet (Op. 25), Zigeunerlieder (“Gypsy Songs”), and, especially, the Hungarian Dances. The themes of most of these Dances were not original with Brahms. He collected them, thinking — as did almost everyone else at that time — that the melodies were folk tunes, and he clearly stated that they were arrangements. Such a precaution, however, did not exempt Brahms, one of the most honest and forthright of all the great composers, from being accused of plagiarism by the Hungarian violinist Ede Reményi, with whom he had toured early in his career. Reményi disingenuously claimed that Brahms had stolen the tunes from him, and when that tale was easily exploded, Reményi issued a list of the composers of the melodies in an interview printed in 1879 by the New York Herald, forcing Brahms’ publisher, Simrock, to distribute a pamphlet defending Brahms on the basis of the Dances being arrangements for piano, four hands, that were never intended to be passed off as original work — Brahms did not even give them an opus number. (When Brahms sent the score to Simrock, he wrote, “I offer them as genuine Gypsy children which I did not beget, but merely brought up with bread and milk.”) Despite this petite scandale, the Hungarian Dances proved to be among the most enduringly popular of Brahms’ works.The Dance No. 5 (G minor), arranged for orchestra by the conductor Albert Parlow (1822-1888), is a setting of the melody Bartfai-Emlek (“Remembrance of Bartfa”) attributed to the German-Hungarian bandmaster and composer of light music Béla Kéler. The Dance No. 5 (G minor), arranged for orchestra by the conductor Albert Parlow (1822-1888), is a setting of the melody Bartfai-Emlek (“Remembrance of Bartfa”) attributed to the German-Hungarian bandmaster and composer of light music Béla Kéler.