Clara alone, for the past decade, or with Johannes or with Joseph, has often brought her concerts to a close with a bouquet of those irresistible Hungarian Dances, by turns fiery or languorous, with their supple, syncopated, swaying rhythms and their evocations of the cimbalom.
Brigitte François-Sappey
This concert places the spotlight on Johannes Brahms, and more particularly on his Third Symphony and his Hungarian Dances. The German composer was in his forties when, over the course of just more than a decade, he wrote his four symphonies, between 1876 and 1885. And although the Third is by far the least frequently performed in concert, it is also the best known, thanks to its third movement, which was used in the soundtrack of the film Aimez-vous Brahms? (Goodbye Again), set in the Paris of the 1960s, with Ingrid Bergman, Anthony Perkins, and Yves Montand.
Composed in Wiesbaden, it was premiered in Vienna on 2 December 1883 by Hans Richter, who at once bestowed upon it the epithet “heroic”, as a tribute to Ludwig van Beethoven. As for the Hungarian Dances, published by Simrock at the very end of the 1860s, they bear no opus number, since Johannes Brahms did not claim authorship of them, considering himself rather as the arranger of themes he had collected from the Hungarian violinist Ede Reményi.
Meanwhile, in Prague, Antonín Dvořák had made a name for himself in the 1870s with the performance of a hymn that earned him a position as organist and professor at the Conservatory.
But it was to Johannes Brahms that Dvořák owed his recognition as a composer: it was Brahms who introduced him to Simrock and ensured the spread of his work throughout Central Europe.
Programme
Johannes Brahms
Symphonie no 3 en fa majeur, op. 90
Antonín DvořÁk
Danses slaves, op. 46 et 72 (extraits)
Johannes Brahms
Danses hongroises, op. deest (extraits)
