Sunday 27 September 2026 - Programme Notes by Ruth Aldred
Brahms - Hungarian Dances 1, 3, 10
Johannes Brahms - Hungarian Dances 1, 3, 10
No.1 in G minor (Allegro molto)
No.3 in F major (Allegretto)
No.10 in F major (Presto)
(Born 1833, Hamburg, died 1897, Vienna)
Brahms' enthusiasm for folk music was initially inspired by Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies. In 1850 he met the Hungarian violinist Ede Reményi, accompanying him in a number of recitals. Through Reményi, Brahms was introduced to traditional folk music such as the csárdás, and the duo’s exciting performances of these dances became well known. This provided the foundation for one of his most popular compositions, the Hungarian Dances. This set of twenty-one dances, based mostly on Hungarian themes, was originally written for piano duet (four-hands, one piano). They have been rearranged in a variety of ways, not always by the composer, including for solo piano, violin and piano, and for orchestra. Many composers, including Antonín Dvořák, have written orchestral arrangements. Brahms himself orchestrated only three of the dances, nos. 1,3 and 10 that are being performed this afternoon. The pieces capture the foot stamping energy of traditional Hungarian folk dances with dramatically changing tempi, lyrical melodies and whirling virtuoso sections.
Ruth Gipps - Horn Concerto (1968)
(born Bexhill-on Sea 1921, died Sussex 1999)
Ruth Gipps was a talented performer, conductor and composer in a time when being a female professional musician was incredibly challenging. Born in 1921 her family home was the Bexhill School of Music, run by her mother, a talented Swiss piano teacher. A child prodigy, Ruth began playing the piano from an early age, performing aged four at the Grotrian Hall in London, and premiering her first composition at the age of eight in Brighton. She subsequently studied piano and oboe at the Royal College of Music together with composition under the tutelage of Gordon Jacob and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Her compositions were much acclaimed, the string quartet Sabrina winning a Cobbett prize in 1940. A shoulder injury unfortunately ended her performance career, and her energies were instead directed into composition. Her output was prodigious including five symphonies, two piano concertos and a wealth of chamber music. Her tone poem Knight in Armour was conducted by Sir Henry Wood at the proms in 1942. The horn concerto was composed in 1968 for her son Lance Baker, a professional horn player. Gipps conducted the premiere with the London Repertoire Orchestra, an ensemble that she herself founded in the 1950s to provide performance opportunities for young professionals. The piece is known as a challenging solo work with its technical complexities.
There are three movements. The mystical opening of the first movement gives way to swirls of orchestral sound with call and response figures between soloist and orchestra. The central section becomes increasingly virtuosic for the horn player culminating in a cadenza until giving way to a quiet, resolved chord. The second movement is a playful scherzo in 7/8. There are bold dynamic changes and a lyrical central section highlighting the tone of the horn, until the opening music dramatically returns. The final movement juxtaposes lyrical lines with playful melodies and once more challenges the soloist with fast melodies, high notes and a bold finale.
Georges Bizet - Symphony in C (1855)
(Born 1838, Paris, France; died 1875, Bougival, France)
The composer George Bizet, most famous for his opera Carmen, was also a child prodigy. He was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire aged nine, writing his first symphony, the symphony in C we will play today, at the age of seventeen in 1855. This symphony was never published or performed in Bizet’s lifetime. It was discovered by an archivist, Jean Chantavoine, in the Conservatoire’s archives in 1933. Bizet’s biographer, Douglas Charles Parker, took the work to the conductor Felix Wengartner, who then conducted its premiere in Basel in the same year. It is unknown why Bizet never mentioned this work in any letters or tried to have it published or performed. It is believed that this symphony was written as an assignment while Bizet was a student of the composer Charles Gounod. Bizet much admired Gounod’s work and was heavily influenced by his style. So much so that many of the structural and stylistic elements of Gounod’s First Symphony can be found in Bizet’s own First Symphony.
Although Bizet was living though an age of emotional indulgence, this is a classical symphony at heart. It bubbles with youthful vigour, freshness, elegance and technical skill. The first movement is structured in a sonata form where several Mozartian themes are introduced, expanded and varied in the central development section before returning in a cascade of energy. The main theme of the slow second movement encompasses the beginning and the end of the movement, played by the oboe and accompanied by gentle pizzicato strings. Nestling in between, gentle triplets and short staccato musical gestures are passed around the orchestra creating a gently exotic musical colour. The third moment is a minuet and trio. The fast minuet has a lilting energy and the more peasant-like trio section uses drone sounds from the strings under a foot-stamping woodwind tune. The final movement bowls along at a vigorous pace, out of which two themes appear. A tune that was used subsequently as march music for the street urchins in the first act of Carmen and a contrasting lyrical melody with a distinctly French ambience. The first violins rush pell mell in bright staccato runs and the symphony ends in a joyous burst of orchestral sound.
Ruth Aldred