HARSÁNYI a Hungarian in Paris Violin Sonatina Violin Sonata Viola Sonata Trois Pièces De Danse

Tibor HARSÁNYI A Hungarian in Paris Violin Sonatina Violin Sonata Viola Sonata Trois pièces de danse Charles Wetherbee, Violin / Viola David Korevaar, Piano Tibor Tibor Harsányi (1898-1954) HARSÁNYI Violin Sonatina • Violin Sonata • Trois pièces de danse • Viola Sonata (1898-1954) Hungarian-born pianist, composer, conductor, and A 1929 interview by the Parisian critic José Bruyr, in musicologist Tibor Harsányi was part of the lively Paris Le guide du concert, includes Harsányi’s own descriptions A Hungarian in Paris musical scene from 1923. He was a student of Kodály in of his youth: Budapest, then travelled around Europe as a performer, settling briefly in Holland, where he worked as a In Hungary, just as in France before 1914 and Sonatina for Violin and Piano (1919) 19:02 conductor. Once in Paris he joined with other expatriate the phonograph, music was understood as the 1 Moderato 6:23 composers, including the Czech Bohuslav Martinů, the complement of all bourgeois education... That is 2 Scherzo 3:58 Romanian Marcel Mihalovici, the Swiss Conrad Beck, and the reason why my family made me, a little 3 Allegro giusto 8:41 the Russians Alexander Tansman and Alexander gentleman of four or five years old, sit in front of Tcherepnin. In a 1929 article in the Revue Musical, the the keyboard. But, until I was fifteen, even while critic Arthur Hoerée dubbed this group “l’école de Paris”, practising Bach or Chopin, I was only thinking Sonata for Violin and Piano (1925) 21:36 writing that they were not only “remarkable young talents about a football match or a hundred-metre 4 Allegro ma non troppo 6:46 rubbing shoulders with the French, but also foreigners running race. 5 Lento 9:03 who have chosen Paris as their base and participate in its artistic leanings, while at the same time retaining their He goes on to describe service in the Austrian Imperial 6 Vivace 5:47 individual national characters”. Harsányi published a forces in the first World War, his return to Budapest, and volume entitled Treize danses in 1929 featuring works by his subsequent travels, mentioning that he had already Trois pièces de danse (1928) 6:47 a number of members of l’école (including a Foxtrot of his composed, among other works, the Sonatina for Violin 7 Mouvement de Tango 2:12 own) that could be understood as a kind of manifesto of and Piano. the style. Adhering to the anti-Debussy tendencies of Les 8 Mouvement de Boston (Lent) 2:29 six, but with a distinctly international cast, the music is Around this time I left Budapest for Vienna, falling 9 Mouvement de Foxtrot 2:06 flavoured with the influences of the American-inflected from Charybdis to Scylla, from the [Hungarian] jazz of the Paris dance halls, the spare and often revolution into inflation: life was impossible in Sonata for Viola and Piano (1953-54) 18:56 dissonant textures of the neoclassicists, and a certain Vienna. I set forth once again. I travelled through amount of folk colour. Harsányi himself was a prolific Germany... ending up settling in Holland. 0 Allegro cantabile 6:49 composer of chamber music, solo piano works, and ! Adagio 6:43 songs, as well as opera and ballet. Aside from occasional After a short time, he continued to Paris, where he arrived @ Allegro giocoso con vivo 5:24 performances of his setting of The Brave Little Tailor without knowing a word of French or “a living soul”. But, (1937) for chamber ensemble and narrator – described in he adds, “as I’ve said, a musician can’t live anywhere a 1952 survey of his work (in the British journal The else”. Earlier in the interview, Harsányi described Paris as Chesterian) as “an exquisite and witty suite for chamber orchestra” – his music is essentially unknown today, in ... a purgatory for a musician who lives for his art. spite of its intrinsic quality and individual style. Never mind that Paris now plays the rôle that Harsányi’s importance in the Parisian musical scene Vienna played a century earlier. Beethoven and is acknowledged in a 1931 piece in the The Chesterian by Schubert were then just semi-understood. But Andreas Liess, who writes: “Strict adherence to could they have lived and created any other development of clear and concise form and expressive way? ... Paris, great laboratory of contemporary art, together with his exceptional rhythmical gift, places music, today counts more composers than the Harsany (sic) in the forefront of his contemporaries.” rest of the universe. Harsányi’s concluding words reflect his concern with logic interpolations of dance music. The finale, a grandly- the contrasts more controlled, than in the earlier works. All music evolves as a series of slowly blossoming and order: scaled sonata-form movement with a repeated exposition, three movements are in sonata form. Even with this expressive gestures – not dissimilar from the earlier Violin opens with the violin and piano playing their intense higher level of refinement, the music retains a mixture of Sonata in terms of the improvisatory quality of the A page of The Well-Tempered Clavier individual lines at the same time, with an expressive sensuousness and earthiness that connects it to the material itself, but enhanced by a carefully worked out participates in mathematics and architecture. urgency that strives in Straussian fashion. The second earlier works. Rhythm remains a critical component. The formal plan. The last movement is the most Hungarian in Bach himself considered music the highest of all theme is in a far simpler texture, dancing playfully. first movement’s lyrical opening theme, for example, is in flavour, beginning with a lively figure presented by the sciences. And, according to Schlegel, music was The 1925 Sonata for Violin and Piano reflects a flowing 5/8 time, simple at first, and then gaining viola, setting off an energetic, rhythmically exciting, and frozen architecture. [Schlegel actually said that currents of modernism in Paris, as well as the music of complexity as the viola and piano diverge metrically from generally contrapuntal chase – the fast part (Friss) of the architecture was frozen music.] Harsányi’s compatriot Bartók, whose two violin sonatas each other in their contrapuntal lines. The second theme Hungarian recruiting dance (Verbunkos) heard through had been written in 1921-22. The Sonata is once again introduces new rhythmic elements, and a far more jagged the prism of the logic and architecture that are hallmarks Bruyr closes with his own thoughts on Harsányi’s music centered on C sharp, but from the first notes we are in a mix of articulations. The second movement, in a very slow of Harsányi’s mature style. as “an individual art reflecting the author’s own image as whole new world of sonic possibilities. The first tempo, begins with a striking pizzicato scale in the viola, well as a new classicism without nationality – or beyond movement, still in a traditional sonata form, begins with a which is spun out contrapuntally by the piano in reply. The David Korevaar nationalities – music of tomorrow’s young Europe”. In contrapuntal presentation of motivically derived thematic 1933, Harsányi told Bruyr: material. Bartókian gestures abound within a sensuous colour palette, at least at first. The second theme, after an Charles Wetherbee It’s just that I no longer believe in the national asymmetrically metered march for a transition, takes the soul marked with the folkloric stigmata of a race. form of a three-voice fugal exposition that revels in Charles Wetherbee is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, Aren’t sounds just some colours to create that irregular rhythms and extraordinary dissonance. The where he studied with Aaron Rosand. A native of Buffalo, New particular colour we call “local”? Bartók and de development returns to the sensuous world of the first York, he gave his first performances at the age of six. He has Falla, with their genius, sustain a compromised theme. The movement ends with a chord that reflects the performed solos under Mstislav Rostropovitch, as well cause, a lost cause. prevalence of American jazz in Paris. The middle performances with the Japan Philharmonic, the Philharmonic movement is an improvisation for the violin, with Orchestra of Bogotá, Colombia, the Columbus Symphony, the The music on this recording presents a survey of numerous cadenza-like passages, highly expressive and National Repertory Orchestra, the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional Harsányi’s stylistic development, from one of his earliest in a Hungarian-influenced rhetorical style. The finale is de Mexico, the State Orchestra of Leningrad, and many others. works, the Sonatina, to his final work, the Viola Sonata. driven by rhythm, and flavoured with touches not only of Charles Wetherbee is the first violinist of the Carpe Diem String The Sonatina, for violin and piano, composed in 1919 Hungary, but also of the Stravinsky of both Petrushka and Quartet, and is a devoted teacher, currently Assistant Professor of while Harsányi was still in Budapest, shares the unusual The Soldier’s Tale. This is wildly exciting music reflective Violin at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is also the Artistic key of C sharp minor with Dohnányi’s Violin Sonata, of the anarchical tendencies of the avant-garde of the Director of The Dercum Center. published in 1911. It reflects his essentially Romantic 1920s: never predictable, always engaging. roots, but with interesting harmonic twists and a Trois pièces de danse, a set of three short piano Hungarian flavour in the musical rhetoric. The slow first pieces composed in 1928, represents l’école de Paris in movement has the violin speaking its phrases with a mix full bloom, obviously drawing on jazz and dance music.

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