I did not begin to read books seriously until high school, so TV was about all the exposure I got to culture back then. It also means I have to step back a little, noweadays, when I start to criticize my daughters when I find them glued to the television on weekends. What is the mental process that turns all adults into hypocrites who forget what it was like to be a child?

Not owning a copy of the complete set of the Dances, I went to the library and checked out a copy. It turns out that Brahms wrote 21 dances, referring to them as alla ungarese, (in the Hungarian style), which was not Hungarian per se, but meant based on popular gypsy melodies of the day. The tag has even fooled Hungarian—I find Danse 1, 5, and 6 on an album I own entitled Music From Hungary, and whenever these pieces were used in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, my father, whose father came to the US in 1904 from Hungary, claimed it was Liszt.

Listening to the full set, they bring back so many images—of mice dancing like Cossacks, characters chasing each other up and down stairs and slamming doors, and swelling romantic scenes. That is what makes these pieces so interesting: they change mood—sometimes abruptly—from slow, lushly orchestrated passages to quick, energetic and uplifting ones. Last Christmas, my daughters gave me a video that contained a number of Bugs Bunny cartoons. They never get stale for me, just as this music never does.

Brahms biography
Recording

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