Hungarian music aficionados might recall the name Hans Koessler as a teacher of Béla Bartók, Ernő Dohnányi, Zoltán Kodály and other renowned Hungarian composers. His work as a composer is much less known, even though his Symphonic Variations were performed, during his lifetime, both in the leading music centres of Europe and in America.

Dedicated “to the spirit of Johannes Brahms”, the Symphonic Variations can be regarded as a portrait of the great German composer from Koessler’s perspective. The composer originally intended to give titles to the different passages of this orchestral work comprising the theme and its seven variations, but these ended up being omitted from the score. Nevertheless, the music itself can help to elucidate the hidden programme.  In the initial variations, Koessler gives voice to his sadness over Brahms’s death and evokes their first encounter, which took place in Budapest. He then goes on to reminisce about him as a friend, and finally, in an almost acknowledged imitation of his style, pays tribute to the memory of the great German master

Ernő Dohnányi bequeathed to posterity two masterpieces in the realm of church music: the grandiose Szeged Mass (1930) and the unique-sounding Stabat Mater (1952-53, premièred in 1956). Having lived in Florida since 1949, he received a commission from the head choirmaster of the Denton Civic Boy’s Choir in Texas to write a large-scale choral work. His choice of text – which can be explained by his recent personal hardships and family tragedies, fell on the medieval poem by Jacopone da Todi: Stabat Mater dolorosa (“The sorrowful mother was standing…”). The work was written for a six-part double choir – which could be a boy’s choir or, as the composer instructed, a female choir – joined by soprano, mezzo-soprano and alto soloists and orchestra.  Although it is post-Romantic in style, its opening theme might have been influenced by J.S. Bach’s cantata Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen and the Crucifixus part of his Mass in B minor.  The gushing, and later on euphorically radiant, closing segment “paradisi gloria” is imbued – just like his Cantus vitae based on text by Imre Madach and his Second Symphony – with the loftiness and faith that was characteristic of the composer’s later work.

I. Allegro non troppo

II. Andante moderato

III. Allegro giocoso

IV. Allegro energico e passionato. Tema con variazioni

Brahms’s Symphony No. 3 is ambiguous from the very beginning: the first chord is in F major, but the soprano harmony in the second measure is an A-flat, more typical of the key of F minor. The passionate main theme that is played afterwards starts out in the major key, but then switches to the minor in the next instant. And the final movement also starts in F minor. János (Hans) Richter, who conducted the world première, considered Brahms’s Third Symphony to be similar to Beethoven’s Third, the Eroica Symphony. The main theme unquestionably suggests heroic pathos. The secondary theme in A major evokes more the atmosphere of old dainty and refined chamber music-style serenades. The melody is played by a clarinet – an instrument that also gets an important role in the beginning of the second movement, the Andante, written in C major. The third movement occupies the place of the customary scherzo (or minuet), but is more of a slightly livelier and more dancelike slow movement. Opened by the cello, it moves into the usual trio in the middle part, and then features a horn, followed by an oboe. What is interesting about the ominously starting finalé is that it returns at the end to the main theme from the first movement.