Although Ernest Dohnanyi, Bela Bartok, and Zoltan Kodaly were the center of twentieth-century Hungarian music, Dohnanyi had little interest in mining the traditional music of the Hungarian people. Instead, his music arose from the German romantic tradition. With its lush soaring emotion, Dohnanyi's Piano Quintet could pass for an early work by Brahms (who admired Dohnanyi). Like many romantic works, this piece spins many emotional moods. The insistent anguish of the piano in the first movement passes over to the brooding ruminations of the second; in the third, the strings lift the piece into the light. The fourth movement resolves the tangle of emotions in a triumphant ending.



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