10078 – Hungarian Dance No. 3

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

arranged by Roger Harvey

Difficulty: Medium

Price: £20.00

Programme note:
Brahms wrote 4 books of Hungarian Dances, the first 2 in four-hand piano versions, later for 2 hands, and the 3rd and 4th only for 2 hands but later arranged for 4 hands. They were based on real Hungarian folk music which he had encountered while playing concerts with a Hungarian violinist and ex-freedom fighter, Eduard Remenyi. Apparently, Brahms and Remenyi spent long rehearsals perfecting the Hungarian idioms, a process that at times led to friction between them. In their published versions these tunes were spectacularly successful and contributed much to Brahms' rising profile.
He was encouraged to make some orchestral transcriptions as other arrangers and their publishers were already capitalising on their own versions. He arranged 3 dances from the first book in 1873. It seems that he took a great deal of trouble in these orchestrations, adding new material to the accompaniment and making sufficient expression markings to convey the Hungarian style he had learned so arduously.

Performance note:

Trumpet 1 is for piccolo trumpet.
Trumpet 4 is for Flugel throughout.
Apart from the tutti at C everything in this dance should be played very lightly. Even the low textures at A and B should have a springing feel. The accents are marked rather than strong to give a syncopated feel to the lines.
Where the 1st trumpet doubles the melody at the octave it should colour rather than lead.