3rd Symphony Concert

Zoltán Kodály "Dances of Galánta"
Ernst von Dohnányi "Variations on a Nursery Song" for orchestra with concertante piano, op. 25
Johannes Brahms Symphony No. 4 in E minor, op. 98

"Galánta" - as Zoltán Kodály recalled - "is a small Hungarian market town on the old Vienna-Budapest railway line, where the composer spent seven years of his childhood. At that time there was a famous band there, which gave the child his first impression of an 'orchestral sound'." The full symphony orchestra lends these Hungarian dances a particular fire.

The "Variations on a Nursery Song" by Kodály's Hungarian colleague Ernst von Dohnányi - five years his senior - are built on the melody "Morgen kommt der Weihnachtsmann" ("Father Christmas is Coming"). The tune is put through every conceivable musical transformation, appearing now as a morbid waltz, then as a strict passacaglia.

A masterly passacaglia also forms the finale of Brahms's Fourth Symphony. The opening theme of the first movement struck Viennese contemporaries as so plain that they set words to it: "He couldn't think of anything again!" Yet this final symphony, with its tight thematic concentration, points far ahead into the 20th century - all the while suffused with autumnal melancholy and a sense of farewell.