Brahms: The 1889 recordings (& Joachim 1903 recording)

An audio aid to deciphering the famous 1889 Brahms recordings. On 2 December 1889 Brahms recorded two pieces on an Edison cylinder: a short version of his Hungarian Dance no.1 and an extract from Josef Strauss’s Polka-Mazurka ’Die Libelle’ (’The Dragonfly’) . The voices of both Brahms and the engineer, Theo Wangemann, can be heard at the beginning of these recordings (as later documented by the son of Dr Fellinger, at whose Viennese house the recording session took place). This video contains 4 versions of each piece of music, to help decipher the sound on what are now extremely deteriorated, though remarkable, recordings.