By the time Brahms came to write the dances recorded here, the use of popular ‘Hungarian’ tunes and styles in art music was already a time-honoured practice. These ‘Hungarian’ tunes had nothing to do with the Hungarian peasantry but emanated from the urban notated and highly commercialised music of the Hungarian gypses.

The works on this disc owe their original inspiration to Brahms’s short-lived partnership with the Hungarian violinist Eduart Reményi, and were first issued as a fourpart collection of piano duets. Through Reményi, with whom he toured northern Germany in 1853, Brahms first encountered the music of the gypsies. It was in the capacity of arranger that he issued books I and II, only to be met by a storm of controversy in which a number of very minor composers, Reményi among them, accused him of pirating their tunes. It seems that many of the melodies are indeed attributable to other composers, though it is unlikely that Brahms knew this for he accompanied Reményi by ear and probably never saw any of the melodies in print. Whatever the truth, it is the masterly settings rather than the tunes themselves that account for the works’ popularity.

The Hungarian Dances brought Brahms almost overnight to the notice of a wide public who were seldom to extend a similar welcome to his other, more serious, works. Although designed at first for the domestic use of those largely amateur pianists whose capabilities were up to the sometimes considerable demands made in these works, the Hungarian Dances have achieved their greatest popularity in orchestral arrangements for the concert hall.