Brahms: Hungarian Dance No 5

Brahms, early childhood
Fruit of the union of Hersika, a seamstress, and Johann, an extroverted musician who earned his living playing in small orchestras that encouraged provincial life, Johannes Brahms had to leave school two years after he begun conventional studies. His parents had seen in the little boy, at the age of seven, a child prodigy whose musical skills, properly exploited, could take them out of the humble condition in which they lived, in the slums of Hamburg, in the late 1840s.

Brahms, aged 20 (1833 - 1897)

And fortune was on his side. A remarkable piano teacher named Cossel, whom Johann knew purely by chance, offered to teach Hannes — as he was called as a family —  without receiving anything in return. The child Brahms responded to this token of generosity by devoting himself to learning seriously, with tenacity and a large quota of personal sacrifice. Since there was no piano in Brahms' home, he had to contrive to get a kind bourgeois to lend him one. The piano maker Baumgartner, looking to the future, did his utmost to support the child.

Faced with the remarkable progress of the child, Professor Cossel decided Johannes continue his training with whom had been his own teacher, a renowned musical director that far exceeded the artistic stature of Cossel himself.
But this time the guidance had to be paid.

Brahms in the taverns
The increase in family income became an inescapable necessity. Fortunately, the solution was at hand. Johann, an expert in these matters, obtained for Hannes a job in a tavern in the port neighbourhoods of Hamburg.

There, sitting at the piano, little ten-year-old Johannes had the mission of delighting with light melodies the ears of drunken sailors and tender prostitutes. If his audience burned with enthusiasm, he should also play the violin, the violoncello and the horn, instruments that, luckily, he also handled with dexterity.

This pitiful story — which the composer himself undertook to divulge — did not prevent, however, that adult Brahms could later compose melodies full of joy, prominent among them the highly celebrated Hungarian Dances, twenty-one pieces of much liveliness and brilliance, originally written for piano four hands and composed during a period that goes from 1852 to 1869.

Hungarian Dance No. 5, in F sharp minor
The dances were the most profitable for Brahms, and later were arranged for many instruments and ensembles. He also arranged the first ten dances for solo piano, the dance No 5 becoming the most popular. It is based on some czardas written by another composer, which Brahms mistakenly thought they were folk songs.

A version for solo piano, by American pianist Caroline Clipsham.

Below, Bill Edwards, former champion of the USA Old-Time Piano Playing Championship, trying to revalidate the title with a novel version halfway between ragtime and charleston.

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