Hungarian Rhapsody

As a long-term associate of Franz Liszt – to whom he owed his appointment as the first professor of cello at the recently opened National Hungarian Royal Acadamy of Music in Budapest – David Popper knew all there was to know about the art of the Hungarian rhapsody. If, having been born into a Czech-Jewish family in Prague, he hadn’t absorbed the Hungarian-gypsy idiom as thoroughly as Liszt had, he could still, thanks not least to his expert knowledge of virtuoso cello technique, write a sensational piece in rhapsody style. Scored originally for cello and orchestra, Popper’s Hungarian Rhapsody makes the most of the traditional csárdás contrast between slow and fast sections. It begins with a grandiloquent Andante maestoso with two cello cadenzas, the second of which takes the cello to the perilous upper limit of its range. This is followed by a melancholy and stylishly decorated Andante which leads, by way of another cadenza. into an authentically melodious Allegretto and from there into a frenetic Presto of rapidly articulated staccato semiquavers. There is one last slow section, an Adagio with expressive double-stopped thirds on the cello before the brilliant Allegro vivace coda.