Zigeunerweisen

Zigeunerweisen was written in 1878, after Sarasate had spent time in Budapest, and first played in Leipzig that year. It opens with a slow, rhapsodic lassan and turns into a friska of increasing speed, the whole built on melodies of Hungarian urban gypsy bands rather than on rural folk material. One of the tunes was traced to a song by Elemér Szentirmay, who pressed a copyright claim; Sarasate acknowledged the source in later editions. The piece was among the first he recorded, on cylinders made in 1904, so his own playing of it survives.