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Music Monday | Brahms at Full Gallop | August 10, 2026
- Aug 10
- 1 min read
Johannes Brahms composed his 21 Hungarian Dances originally for piano four hands, basing them on folk melodies he had collected and loved since his early years in Hamburg, where Hungarian Romani musicians had set the city alight. He later arranged several for solo piano and for orchestra, but the four-hand originals have a propulsive, unpolished energy that no other version quite captures. Two pianists locked in together, driving rhythms forward with the kind of abandon that a solo pianist simply cannot sustain alone.
Hungarian Dance No. 8 in A minor is one of the most exhilarating in the set: marked at a breathless, full-speed tempo, it tears out of the gate and barely pauses for breath. In the right hands, it is over almost before you realize what has happened, leaving you wanting to hear it again immediately.
Those right hands belong today to brothers Juan Fernando and José Enrique Moreno Gistaín of Zaragoza, Spain. Performing across Europe and the Americas, the Moreno Gistaín Piano Duo has appeared at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels, the Juan March Foundation in Madrid, and international festivals from Granada to Gijón. Watch them take Brahms at full gallop.
