Joachim/Brahms: Hungarian Dances

Brahms, Johannes, Joachim, Joseph

Bisengaliev, Marat, Lenehan, John

8.553026

Joachim's relationship with Brahms was important. The latter was able to call on Joachim for advice in orchestration and in writing for strings, and was undoubtedly influenced by the quartet that Joachim established in Hanover and by the very distinguished Joachim Quartet, established first in 1869. Brahms and Joachim were united in their opposition to the Neo-German school of Liszt and Wagner and their friendship was only broken when Brahms, with habitual indiscretion, wrote a letter of support to Joachim's wife, the singer Amalie Weiss, when divorce was threatened. The letter was produced in court as evidence of Joachim's unreasonable behaviour, and the divorce was not granted. A measure of amity was restored when Brahms wrote for Joachim his Double Concerto, for violin and cello.
As a composer Joachim wrote relatively little. He left, however, a series of useful cadenzas to major classical concertos, violin studies and editions and a number of works for violin and orchestra and violin or viola and piano. His arrangement of Brahms's popular Hungarian Dances returns to suitably idiomatic musical form the 21 dances that Brahms had written between 1852 and 1869 for piano duet. These were published in that form in 1869 and in 1880, with an arrangement of the first two books for one player appearing in 1872.
The dances capture something of the spirit of supposed Hungarian gypsy music. Included in the present recording are two pieces by Joachim for violin and piano, an Andantino and a Romance, the first a more substantial work, arranged by Joachim from his own composition for violin and orchestra.

CD x 1

Naxos

9/12/95

730099402620