Hungarian March

Hector Berlioz (1803–69) was a French composer, but he knew how to take a Hungarian subject and turn it into a showpiece to entertain listeners far beyond the borders of a country in Eastern Europe.

In his 1846 concert-theater piece The Damnation of Faust (based on the dramatic poem by the German Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who takes us farther from Hungary still), Berlioz wanted to introduce his brilliant orchestration of the Rákóczy March (aka the Hungarian March). This was named for Ferenc Rákóczy II, leader of an uprising at the beginning of the eighteenth century in the Hungarians’ endless struggle for independence from Austria.

The march was originally composed by János Bihari, a Gypsy fiddler, but found a wide audience thanks to Franz Liszt, who transmuted it into one of his Hungarian Rhapsodies. Berlioz treated the march as a little drama all in itself, and at the outset he presents the music as an unassuming (though a commanding) march tune. All that changes over the course of the piece, which builds to a tremendous climax.

source: San Francisco Symphony