Ruralia Hungarica, Op. 32a

Seven pieces for solo piano, Op. 32a, composed 1923. Originally also cast in an orchestral version (Op. 32b), Ruralia Hungarica ('Hungarian Rural Scenes') draws on the flavour of Hungarian folk and popular music — pentatonic melody, asymmetrical rhythm, a distinctive Hungarian coloration — filtered through Dohnányi's post-Romantic harmonic language. A landmark in the cultivation of a national Hungarian piano idiom, these pieces run parallel to (and somewhat differently from) Bartók's and Kodály's more ethnomusicologically rigorous approach to folk material.