‘ALLA ZINGARESE’

April 11, 2024 | Blue Gallery

Per Tengstrand piano
Hana Mundiya violin
Katie Liu viola
Robin Park cello

Illustrated talk by Per Tengstrand

Liszt - Piano Sonata in B minor
Brahms - Piano Quartet No.1 in G minor, Op. 25

Photographs by Alex Fedorov © 2024

As a little boy growing up in the Hungarian countryside, Franz Lizst often wandered through the nearby Gypsy camps, fascinated by the music of the proud Romani people. He was more influenced by their art than was any other composer, except perhaps Johannes Brahms. The style hongrois is present in the music of both these composers, not only in obvious cases such as their Hungarian rhapsodies and dances, but also in their ‘serious’ music. When the young, relatively unknown Brahms visited Liszt in Weimar in 1853, the meeting ended with the latter performing his Sonata in B minor. The finale of Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Rondo alla Zingarese, is one of the supreme examples of a classical work that employs the feverish frenzy and rhythmic energy as well as heartache and sadness of Gypsy music.