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," 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 weight of a 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 - takes the melody "Morgen kommt der Weihnachtsmann" ("Father Christmas is Coming") as its theme, putting it through every conceivable musical transformation with mock solemnity: now a morbid waltz, now a stern passacaglia.

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