21 Hungarian Dances WoO 1

“What one has so long and so boisterously merely played, is awkward to write down.” With this charming self-irony, Johannes Brahms described the lively origins of his Hungarian Dances, whose rousing rhythms and fiery melodies continue to captivate to this day. Brahms’s friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim, made a congenial arrangement for violin and piano which combines consummate virtuosity with the magic of chamber music. Our edition follows the first edition published by Simrock and compares it with the original version for piano four-hands. For the first time, it offers all the dances of this arrangement together in one volume – a musical homage to the close friendship between two exceptional artists and to the eternal power of Hungarian tone colour.