Brahms: Hungarian Dances No.s 1-21 / Audio CD / Budapest Festival Orchestra / Conducted by Iván Fischer ‎/ András Keller violin, Kálmán Balogh cymbal / Hungaroton

UPC 5991811257125 

HCD12571

MADE IN HUNGARY

HUNGAROTON 1985   DDD

Total Playtime: 56 minutes

Johannes Brahms (7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria. His reputation and status as a composer are such that he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the "Three Bs" of music, a comment originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow.

Brahms composed for symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, piano, organ, and voice and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works. He worked with some of the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim (the three were close friends). Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. An uncompromising perfectionist, Brahms destroyed some of his works and left others unpublished.

The Budapest Festival Orchestra (Hungarian: Budapesti Fesztiválzenekar) was formed in 1983 by Iván Fischer and Zoltán Kocsis, with musicians "drawn from the cream of Hungary's younger players", as The Times put it. Its aim was to make the orchestra's concerts into significant events in Hungary's musical life, and to give Budapest a new symphony orchestra of international standing.

Iván Fischer (born 20 January 1951) is a Hungarian conductor and composer.

Born in Budapest into a musical family of Jewish heritage, Fischer initially studied piano, violin, cello and composition in Budapest. His older brother, Ádám Fischer, became a conductor in his own right. He moved later to Vienna to study conducting with Hans Swarowsky at the University of Music and Performing Arts, where he also studied cello and early music, studying and working as assistant to Nikolaus Harnoncourt. He also studied with Franco Ferrara at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena.

In 1976, Fischer won the Rupert Foundation conducting competition in London. He began thereafter to guest-conduct such British orchestras as the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony and the London Symphony Orchestra, with whom he conducted a world tour in 1982. His US conducting debut was with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1983.

Hungaroton Classic ‎– HCD 12571