<\/p>
It never hurts to have friends in high places, and in the case of Anton\u00edn Dvo\u0159\u00e1k<\/a><\/strong> that friend was Johannes Brahms. It was on the older German composer\u2019s advice that, in early 1878, Dvo\u0159\u00e1k sent his Moravian Duets<\/em> for soprano and piano to Brahms\u2019s influential, and financially canny, Berlin publisher Fritz Simrock. Knowing a good thing when he saw it, Simrock promptly asked Dvo\u0159\u00e1k to write two books of dances for piano duet in the style of Brahms\u2019s Hungarian Dances<\/em>. <\/p> Within two months, eight pieces for four hands were on the publisher\u2019s desk, followed soon after by orchestrated versions of both. In this latter form, the Slavonic Dances<\/a><\/strong><\/em> would become a staple diet of orchestras all over the world while \u2013 latching onto the boom in popularity of upright pianos in people\u2019s homes \u2013 sales of the sheet music for the piano original filled Simrock\u2019s coffers nicely and made Dvo\u0159\u00e1k a household name.<\/p> This was by no means the first time that Brahms<\/a><\/strong> had helped to propel the Czech composer\u2019s career. Three years earlier, he had been a new member of the jury that decided which young creative talents would be the beneficiaries of the annual Austrian State Stipendium, a grant from the Austrian Ministry of Education, to help encourage their artistic endeavours. <\/p>Brahms and Dvo\u0159\u00e1k: a fertile friendship<\/h2>