Hungarian Dances

The Hungarian Dances were to win immediate popularity. The piano duet was, in any case, a form much in use, providing a useful element in domestic entertainment, as well as serving a more professional purpose as a means of performing transcribed orchestra works. The Hungarian Dances were subject to the contrary process, and Brahms himself orchestrated the first, third and tenth in 1885. The Czech composer Antonin Dvorák, to whom Brahms had given early encouragement, orchestrated the last five, and did the same for his own piano duet Slavonic Dances. Other arrangements for orchestra were made by the Russo-German composer Paul Juon, the Swedish conductor Hallen, the bandmaster Parlow and others. The dances themselves make use of gypsy melodies, although there are three original compositions by Brahms, Nos. 11, 14 and 16. In general the later sets issued in 1880 have about them more of Brahms than of Hungary, and, perhaps as a consequence, were to prove slightly less popular. Within the prevailing idiom the dances have considerable variety and marked rhythmic interest. It seems that Wagner had the Hungarian Dances partly in his mind when he wrote with his usual acerbity "I know famous composers that you can meet at concert masquerades, one day in the guise of a ballad singer, the next in Handel's Hallelujah wig, another time as a Jewish Csárdás player, and then again as genuine symphonists dressed up as number ten". The general public, on the other hand, has always taken kindly to the Csárdás, which, with the similar verbunkos (recruiting dance) were the principal dance melodies that Brahms borrowed.