The second half of the 19th century was a heyday of playing pieces for four hands. Johannes Brahms eagerly responded to the demand for repertoire created in this way, writing among others two cycles of love songs and arrangements of Hungarian dances. These canonical pieces will be recalled by the piano duo of Emilia Sitarz and Bartłomiej Wąsik – Lutosławski Piano Duo, and in the Liebeslieder you will also hear the artists of the NFM Choir conducted by Lionel Sow.

Johannes Brahms’s moving from Germany to Vienna in 1863 was sealed by the appointment of the famous composer as conductor of the Viener Singakademie Viennese choir. The new position prompted him to engage some of his creative flair in writing new vocal works. Among them was a collection of songs for a vocal quartet, the performances of which were also to be accompanied by a piano for four hands, Liebeslieder-Walzer op. 52, as well as its continuation in the form of Neue Liebeslieder op. 65. In both, Brahms drew on folk music – the folklore of Upper Austria and northern Germany, where he came from. Without any doubt, the local colour of Vienna had a great influence on their musical shape – both in the form of the legacy of Franz Schubert and the activity of “The Waltz King”, Johann Strauss. As for the lyrics of the songs, all, except for one, the last one – by Goethe – come from the Polydora anthology of Brahms’s favorite poet, Georg Friedrich Daumer, who reputedly collected his own translations of poetry from various parts of the world, includingTurkey and Malaysia. The brilliant lyrical love miniatures very quickly became popular and brought their author a considerable fortune.

Commercial success and folk inspirations combine these songs with the next point of the programme – Hungarian Dances. The arrangements by Brahms, some of which will be presented by the Lutosławski Piano Duo, are the fruit of the composer’s acquaintance with Ed Reményi, a Hungarian violinist with whom Brahms performed as an accompanist in his youth. Working with him, Brahms had an opportunity to familiarise himself with the musical heritage of Hungary, which inspired Brahms’s later composing of csárdáses and verbunkoses.