MOBILE RED HEDGEHOG - Flipbook - Page 27
This magical facility delighted and confounded
the Viennese, who even subjected it to quasiscientific tests to eliminate any possibility of
cheating. Their suspicion was symptomatic of a
deeper anxiety about their apparent disregard for
authority; as one newspaper put it in 1860, “It
exerts a violence, this gypsy music, an elemental
eûect, like a force of nature; it rushes at us like a
storm, grips us like an irresistible whirlpool, and
we have to swim with it, whether we want to or
not”.
Brahms adored these bands, visiting the ‘Csárdá’—
the Hungarian tavern in Vienna that hosted them
for over 30 years—“often and gladly”, as one friend
put it. At the peak of their popularity a dozen
groups played nightly at diûerent venues around
the city, for guests at imperial balls and dancers at
popular nightclubs alike, who recognised their
own romantic aspirations in the pathos of the
music, and the defiance that it represented.
Our performances of these tunes are very much in
the spirit of the earliest recordings, which draw on
some melodies that are surprisingly familiar thanks
to the Rhapsodies and Hungarian Dances
arranged by Liszt and Brahms.
