Accord­ing to influ­en­tial con­duc­tor Hans von Bülow, the Ger­man com­pos­er Johannes Brahms was one of the “three Bs” of musi­cal com­po­si­tion along with Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach and Lud­wig van Beethoven (an acco­lade that Brahms him­self would prob­a­bly have reject­ed giv­en his per­son­al ven­er­a­tion for both those com­posers). He was a vir­tu­oso pianist and a pro­lif­ic com­pos­er of sym­phonies, cham­ber music, piano, organ and choral works through­out the sec­ond half of the 19^th cen­tu­ry. How­ev­er, it’s his ear­ly expe­ri­ences lead­ing to his series of Hun­gar­i­an dances that inter­est us here.

By the mid­dle of the 19^th Cen­tu­ry, scores of Hun­gar­i­an immi­grants and refugees from through­out the Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an Empire were flood­ing into Aus­tria – most­ly to Vien­na, but also to many oth­er towns includ­ing Brahms’s home­town of Ham­burg. As a young musi­cian at the begin­ning of his musi­cal career, Brahms had to play light piano music at tav­erns to make mon­ey. He would also occa­sion­al­ly get hired as an accom­pa­nist for a tour­ing musi­cian, and on one evening he had the good for­tune to meet one of Hungary’s great tour­ing vio­lin­ists, Eduard Reményi. Brahms thus learned gyp­sy music in the inti­mate musi­cal com­pa­ny of the great­est gyp­sy vio­lin­ist of the time.

For­ev­er after cher­ish­ing gyp­sy music, Brahms would go on to pub­lish two sets of Hun­gar­i­an Dances for two pianos, 21 pieces in all. To this day, how­ev­er, Hun­gar­i­an Dance No. 5 is prob­a­bly the most beloved of his Dances. And right­ly so, with its enchant­i­ng first theme in a minor key, evok­ing the swag­ger and grav­i­tas of a mus­ta­chioed Slav lover. The first orches­tra­tion of No. 5 was not done by Brahms him­self but by Mar­tin Schmel­ing, but it was this orches­tra­tion of Brahms’s trans­for­ma­tion of gyp­sy music that helped it become one of the most trea­sured pieces in West­ern music’s reper­toire. Enjoy this suit­ably rous­ing ver­sion, appro­pri­ate­ly enough by the Hun­gar­i­an Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra.