Hungarian violinist and composer Jenő Hubay studied with his father and then with the great Joseph Joachim before traveling to Paris, where he became a close friend of Belgian composer Henri Vieuxtemps. Hubay taught at the Brussels Conservatory, Budapest Conservatory, and Budapest Academy of Music, and continued to tour almost annually. He and many of his pupils, including Eugene Ormandy, Zoltan Székely, and Joseph Szigeti helped to shape European violin playing.

Seventeen-year-old Hubay was in the audience when Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen had its first performance in Paris on March 3, 1875, and after the performance he apparently began writing his Carmen fantasie brillante from memory. He featured his new work, completed in 1877, to a receptive audience when he made his Paris debut in 1878. He dedicated it to Vieuxtemps, whose own virtuosity he aptly captured.

Bizet’s memorable Carmen themes have attracted many other arrangers, and the fantasies for violin by Sarasate and Waxman have become the most famous. Hubay’s work, however, might be called the most “fantastic” of these displays since it presents Bizet’s themes as motives and touchstones for his dazzling display rather than telling a story in chronological order.

Hubay begins with the ominous fate motive and includes Micaela’s Act III aria, “A tu parle a mon mère”; Carmen’s ultra-famous Habanera, Escamillo’s Toreador Song, “Avôtre tost”—not included in the other fantasies; and the March of the Toreadors; as well as a remarkable cadenza that also touches on the Danse bohème. Unlike the opera, Hubay’s Carmen fantasie brillante concludes triumphantly.

—©Jane Vial Jaffe