An uneasy relationship of professional admiration, a degree of
jealousy, and awkward friendship existed between Johannes Brahms
and Joseph Joachim. Brahms composed many works for Joachim -
including his violin concerto, which he also dedicated to his
friend, and he often turned to Joachim for help and advice. The
upbringing of the two musicians was very different - Joachim
had grown up with traditional Hungarian gypsy music - a type
of music which hugely appealed to Brahms, who had been brought
up in a more strictly classical tradition. Brahms therefore collected
and arranged gypsy tunes as something exotic and foreign that
nevertheless called strongly to him, whilst Joachim incorporated
the spirit and melody of gypsy music into the character of his
compositions as a natural matter of course.
Brahms considered his
Hungarian Dances to be arrangements
rather than original compositions. The
Dances were originally
published for solo piano or piano duet, and Joachim arranged
them for the natural gypsy instrument, the violin, accompanied
by the piano. He had quite a free hand with the arrangements,
adding new cadenzas and passages, sometimes transposing sections,
and ornamenting the melodic lines liberally to create a version
more true to the wildness of the gypsy style.
On this disc from Hyperion, the two sets of Brahms’s
Hungarian
Dances are followed by Joachim’s
Variations in E
minor, which he dedicated to Sarasate, following Sarasate’s
dedication of a set of Spanish Dances to him. The
Variations
in E minor is one of the very few works that Joachim composed
in the later part of his life. The piece is are still pervaded
by the spirit of the gypsy violinist, if less overtly than the
Hungarian
Dances.
The performers on this disc, the Israelite duo Hagai Shaham and
Arnon Erez, give excellent performances - full-blooded, fiery,
romantic and passionate, but with filigree touches of delicacy
and sensitivity where needed. Shaham’s dark tone suits
the music perfectly. The pieces are fiendishly difficult, yet
Shaham and Erez play them with virtuosic flair. A superb disc.
Em Marshall
Hagai Shaham (violin); Arnon Erez
(piano) 
