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It must have come as quite a shock to those who had known Brahms as only a composer of serious music – notably three piano sonatas, the first piano concerto and the monumental Paganini and Handel variations – to experience the collection of 16 Waltzes published in 1866 when the composer was 33. They were probably begun ten years earlier and form an album of memories reminiscent, in their variety of colour, of the different places in which he had first heard them – Hungarian, Tyrolean and even Nordic picked up no doubt from the sailors who frequented the bars in Hamburg where the composer played to earn a living. The Liebeslieder followed three years later and were originally set for vocal quartet and piano duet; five years later they were published without the vocal parts. The Hungarian Dances were composed and published over a period of eleven or twelve years ending 1870, Brahms orchestrated three of them in 1873. Brahms recommended Dvorák, eight years his junior, to his publisher, Simrock, in 1877 and the following year duly published the first set of Slavonic Dances which they commissioned. The second set followed eight years later. Both sets were originally composed for piano duet and later orchestrated. These recordings are one of the many that Beroff and Collard have made together.
Brahms: Hungarian Dance #1, WoO 1/1