Brahms, Hungarian Dance No. 5

My father had an automatic turntable changer that would play a whole stack of 78 rpm records. For those too young to remember, you stacked multiple records on a spindle that held them suspended over the turntable. You could then sit back let the mechanism play each record, picking up the tone arm, dropping the next disc, and shutting itself off when the last one had played.

At the age of 5 or 6, I was probably as fascinated by the device as I was by the music. If you see one now, it will probably be playing 33 rpm records, but they also played 78s, and the changing action for 78s was 2 1/2 times faster and wonderfully violent. Classical music came in albums (book form) that had multiple discs in paper sleeves. Playing times for each disc varied, but the maximum was about 4-5 minutes. That worked fine for popular songs, but classical works had to be interrupted midstream and continued on the next disc.

With 33 rpm “long-playing” records, the changer became a convenience rather than a necessity. I can recall our family collection containing numerous 78s and only two 33s, one of which was the Brahms Hungarian Dances. At the age of 5 or so, I remember listening to the dances in succession. I didn’t really miss the crazy changing of discs because the music had so many crazy changes of its own. From fast to slow, loud to soft, sudden crashes and other surprises, the Hungarian dances ran the emotional gamut and never seemed to let up.

You don’t have to be a child or have a short attention span to enjoy the drama.