“As far as I know, the Brahms Concerto and Bartók’s First have never been coupled together before on disc,” enthuses Janine Jansen during recording sessions for this album, “but to me they seem a natural pairing. They may speak a different kind of musical language, yet they not only share a Hungarian connection, but also a profound combination of symphonic power and chamber-scale intimacy.”

Brahms’s (and Liszt’s) Hungarian inspiration stemmed directly from nineteenth-century gypsy bands, whose racy, seductive dance music cast an intoxicating spell over the sensation-hungry audiences of the time. Béla Bartók took a more radical view, and having declared passionately during his student years “All my life … I shall have one objective: the good of Hungary and the Hungarian nation”, joined his friend Zoltán Kodály collecting native Hungarian and Transylvanian folksongs in the field, noting them down on manuscript and recording them on a primitive gramophone as they went along. As time went by, the natural melodic contours and quirky rhythmic inflections of indigenous Hungarian folk music became an indissoluble part of Bartók’s own unique creative style.