Vivat Brahms!
Featuring James Barralet's new arrangement of Brahms’s 21 Hungarian Dances for cello and piano! There is no doubt that his compositional skill, coupled with his deep love and knowledge of the instrument have inspired him to make a wonderful transcription of these evergreens. Brahms had originally written the Dances for piano duet and also re-arranged them for solo piano.
Within a few years of the appearance of the first two sets, (Nos 1 – 10), his enterprising publisher Simrock had published arrangements for countless instrumental and orchestral combinations – several Dances were orchestrated by Brahms (an inveterate transcriber of his own music as well as that of other composers’), and some by Dvořák whose Slavonic Dances were undoubtedly suggested by Brahms’s example. Now for the first time in recording history, and thanks to James and his duo partner Simon Callaghan, we have the entire collection in versions for cello and piano.
