NI 7081 NI 7081 Also Available by the Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Adam Fischer Zoltán Kodály Bartók Háry János NI 5229 Concerto for Orchestra, The Miraculous Mandarin. Dances of Galánta NI 5309 Dance Suite, Hungarian Pictures, Two Pictures, Romanian Folk Dances, Romanian Dance. Peacock Variations NI 5333 Violin Concertos 1 & 2, Gerhart Hetzel, violin. NI 5362/3 The Wooden Prince Suite, Two Portraits, Music for strings, percussion and celesta, Divertimento for strings. NI 1771 Bartók.The complete works above. Adam Fischer Hungarian State Recorded at the Haydnsaal, Esterházy Palace, Symphony Orchestra Eisenstadt, Austria. Háry János recorded 30th Sept 1990, Variations 1st Oct 1990, Dances of Galánta 2nd Oct 1990 1991 Wyastone Estate Ltd. © 1991 Nimbus Records Ltd. 8 Vol 3 1 NI 7081 NI 7081 Zoltán Kodály1882-1967 The Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra Háry János: Suite for Orchestra Dances of Galánta The Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1923 under the name of Budapest Municipal Orchestra. After the great losses of the Second World War Variations on a Hungarian Folksong the orchestra was reorganised under the Maestros Ferenc Fricsay and Laszlo Somogyi. ('The Peacock') In 1949 it adopted the name of Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra and since 1952 it has been guided by general music director Janos Ferencsik. In When Zoltán Kodály died in 1967 he was a national figure in his native Hungary, appreciation of its paramount role in fostering symphonic music in Hungary, the admired far beyond musical circles as well as in other countries. His work in orchestra was awarded the highest State prize in 1955. Hungary succeeded in creating a depth of musical culture based on the rich The high artistic standard of the orchestra has been hailed by audiences and heritage of indigenous folk-music, previously little-known and mainly ignored, critics both in Hungary and abroad. The orchestra has scored great successes while his educational work for the young over more than 40 years found practical during its extensive tours. application in publications of singing and reading exercises derived from folk- music; these became known as the 'Kodály method' and were disseminated throughout the musical world. Kodály once declared to his fellow-composer Béla Bartók: To become international one must first be national, and to be national one must be of the people'. The scholarly research he undertook jointly with Bartók in the early years of the century laid the foundation of a specifically Hungarian musical tradition. It also influenced the character of Kodály's own music, including the works recorded here. A poem about the Hungarian folk-hero Háry János was already well-known 23 7 NI 7081 NI 7081 when Kodály set a dramatic text on the same subject as a kind of ballad-opera, the Adam Fischer songs linked by spoken dialogue. It had a resounding success when it wasfirst Adam Fischer is the founder and Music Director of the Austro-Hungarian Haydn staged at Budapest in 1926 and, a year later, the composer made an orchestral Orchestra. He is a citizen of both Austria and Hungary. He was born in Budapest suite from it which has remained ever since amongst his most popular works. and studied music in Vienna. He started his musical career as a repetiteur in Graz, Háry János is one of those legendary old soldier-peasants much given to then took up conducting, working in St Polten, Helsinki, Karlsruhe, Freiburg, fanciful exaggerations about his past travels and exploits, and there is no way of Munich and Vienna. Mr Fischer has repeatedly been a guest conductor at the knowing how much is romantic invention and how much might just possibly be Vienna State Opera since 1980. In Austria he has conducted the Vienna true. However, there is an old Hungarian superstition that if, among those Philharmonic Orchestra and Vienna Symphony Orchestra and has been guest listening during the telling of a story, anybody sneezes, the story must certainly conductor of the Bregenz and Salzburg festivals. In Hungary he works with the be true. So Kodály takes the precaution of beginning his Prelude with a gigantic Hungarian State Orchestra, theBudapest Radio Orchestra and the Orchestra of orchestral sneeze. the Budapest State Opera. A 'Once upon a time' quality is then evoked, with a typical Magyar melody At the Vienna State Opera he has conducted five premières and several new growing to an impassioned climax. Háry János recalls his adventures, beginning productions amounting to more than 100 performances. He has also conducted at with the mechanical displays of the Palace clock in Vienna suggestively the Opera Houses of Hamburg and Munich, at the Grand Opera in Paris andat La illustrated in the orchestra. His romance with a girl-friend, Ilka, is remembered in Scala, Milan. He is a frequent guest of the world's major music centres and has the nostalgic Song on solo viola, with gypsy-style flourishes from woodwind and appeared in New York, Chicago, London, Tokyo, Paris, Zurich, Milan and cimbalom (horizontal strings struck with leather-headed hammers). Berlin, where he has conducted many of the principal symphony orchestras. In Háry would next have us know that he fought furiously against the French 1989 he made his Covent Garden début conducting Die Fledermaus. (grotesque martial phrases) and captured Napoleon single-handed (Bonaparte's mortification expressed on solo saxophone). The cimbalom returns to embellish a traditional courtship dance in the Intermezzo, the melody of which dates from about 1800. Finally, the hero is welcomed amid great pomp and festive splendour at the Imperial Court in Vienna, after which he can only return to his home village and his credulous listeners. The other two works on the disc were composed as particular anniversary 6 23 NI 7081 NI 7081 commissions, theDances of Galántain 1933 for the 80th anniversary of the repeated a fifth lower for the last two. The theme's oriental flavour comes from Budapest Philharmonic Society. Kodály looked back to his earliest childhood notes of the pentatonic scale (the black keys on a piano); it is used with no memories and the gypsy band he heard at Galánta, when his father became reference to the words of the song but as the basis for brilliance of orchestral station-master at this onetime market-town on the main line from Prague and effect in an introduction, 16 variations and finale, played without a break. Bratislava to Budapest. The Galánta band had been famous beyond the locality An extended introduction brings hints of the theme on various instruments for more than a century; some of their dances were collected into a published before it is played in full by the oboe. The first six variations elaborate on the volume in Vienna (1804) from which Kodály chose his themes. theme mainly among the strings, leading to a coda for woodwind and horns.Then He fashioned them into a kind of Hungarian Rhapsody of his own, beginning a change of key brings two livelier variations like Magyar dances, which are with a slow introduction and travelling through five linked dances which become followed by rippling embellishment on clarinets and flutes. Woodwind with steadily quicker. During the introduction an expressive cello theme is elaborated pizzicatostrings are next featured, leading to a more solemn dialogue of cor by other orchestral instruments, until a clarinet takes a cadenza passage into a anglais and oboe with a further key-change. lamenting theme for the first dance(Andante maestoso),followed by a At Variation 12 an impassionedAdagiocontinues into aMarcia funèbre,a rhythmically pointed flute tune for the second(Allegro moderato). variation with a florid cadenza for flutes played in a free peasant style, another The first dance is recalled, after which an oboe begins the third(Allegro con Magyar dance and a summing-up on the full orchestra. But Kodály has not yet moto grazioso).Syncopated rhythms characterise the fourth, which reaches an finished with his ideas, and a three-part finale(Vivace - Andante cantabile - almost rowdy climax before being suddenly cut off. A new tune comes in on the Allegro)achieves a brilliant apotheosis of the folk-style. clarinet, and is continued until flutes and violins start the fifth and last dance (Allegro vivace)which, with some reference back to earlier ideas, builds to a © Noël Goodwin 1991 rousing ending. A commission for the 50th anniversary of what is now the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam in 1939 brought about the 'Peacock' Variations. TheVariations on a Hungarian Folksongtake a theme noted down from another collector's recording of the short, one-stanza song, 'Leszállott a páva' (Fly, peacock, fly). It belongs to the oldest, oriental style of Hungarian folk-music and has a characteristic tune-structure whereby the first two lines are 4 5.