Brahms/Piatti, Hungarian Dances

Purchase CD from JRI Recordings

JRI Recordings (J117)*

Piatti’s compositions, predominantly for cello, enjoyed considerable popularity during his lifetime, and he also arranged music for the instrument; his versions of Brahms’s Hungarian Dances were published in 1881. The arrangements do not disturb Brahms’s structures or lines, yet Piatti brings an instinctive feeling for appropriate variations of colour by multiple-stopping as well as changes of register and texture. Some of the dances are transposed downwards, generating richer sonorities. Piatti makes no technical concessions, yet his virtuosic demands are always idiomatic and effective, as in the parallel thirds, sixths and octaves, triple- and quadruple-stopping, doubled unisons, harmonics, and the frequent high-register writing. Brahms’s Dances are here presented in an attractive and compelling new guise.

  • BRAHMS: (arr. Alfredo Piatti): 21 Hungarian Dances
  • SCHMIDT: Three Fantasy Pieces after Hungarian Melodies

(with pianist Frederick Moyer)

* Re-issued from Biddulph Recordings