Zoltan Kodaly (1882-1967)

The tradition of Hungarian folk music deeply influenced both Kodaly (pronounced ‘Kordie’) and his close friend Bela Bartok. Of the two, Kodaly drew more creative inspiration from the tradition and his musical development was less experimental than his compatriot. But although Kodaly saw it as his vocation to be a nationalist composer, he travelled to Salzburg, Berlin, Paris and Bayreuth, accepted commissions from Chicago and Amsterdam, and his works were taken up by, amongst others, Toscanini whose friendship and encouragement were enormously important to him. After the war he travelled to England, the U.S.A., U.S.S.R. and France to conduct his own music.

Kodaly is one of my earliest musical heroes. The six movements of the Suite from his opera ‘Hary Janos’ - with its famous sneeze – has been part of my record collection for a long time. He wrote three operas, some inventive, melodic and brilliantly crafted orchestral music including two sets of dances from the regions of Galanta ( now in Slovakia but then part of Hungary where he lived as a boy) and Marosszek, as well as a Symphony, a Concerto for Orchestra, and Variations on the Hungarian folk song ’ The Peacock’, and chamber music. He also wrote a great deal of music for children in the latter part of his life and for a while I had an L.P. of some of the beautiful part-songs he wrote for children’s voices.

He once said ‘ Our age of mechanisation leads along a road ending with man himself as a machine; only the spirit of singing can save us from this fate’. There is an upward surge to his music that is sometimes plaintive but always positive, and I find much of it thrilling and very moving. The ‘Psalmus Hungaricus’ (using a free translation of Psalm 55) is perhaps his greatest and most frequently played work, written after a short-lived Republic, which Kodaly had supported. When it was overthrown the he was brought to trial. He set the words to dissonant and passionate music. Hearing it again in the Decca recording of 1971, has brought tears to my eyes.

In 1994, on a visit to Budapest, I visited his house, now turned into a museum. Situated in a sober residential area of the city, it consists of four large but modest rooms. I was the only visitor that cold March morning. A distinguished lady who spoke no English hovered in a friendly way as I slowly looked at his study, his music room, living room and the bedroom that now contains many of his original manuscripts absorbing, as I did so, a sense of the man, and looking at his portrait with its finely featured face and white beard. A memorable moment, and especially poignant as the country he was so proud of and long under the sway of foreign empires, was just beginning to find itself after years of Soviet Russian domination.

B.R.

The State Academy Ballet Theatre of St.Petersburg

On a recent visit to Bruges we were able to see the touring Company of the Ballet Theatre of St. Petersburg – supported by their Capella Orchestra - performing Prokoviev’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’, choreographed by their director Yuri Petukhov. It was a strange production which introduced the malign character of Queen Mab whose evil influence manipulated the whole story-line of the ballet.

In Shakespeare’s play Mercutio makes fun of Romeo, wondering if Mab, the bringer of dreams in Celtic tradition, has visited his lovesick friend : ‘O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies' midwife’. Here she became rather more than that – introducing and ending the ballet and losing in consequence the whole framework of the story of two families at enmity with each other. She kept on appearing (with a puff of smoke), weaving her spells and reducing the two lovers to little more than puppets and –for me – destroying the real tragedy of the drama. The production was sumptuous with wonderful costumes and lighting, and committed dancing by a very youthful team of a very high standard. The intrusive re-writing of the plot, though an irritant, failed to spoil the evening.

The venue was the controversial new Concertgebouw which apparently has united local people in disapproval of the design which, like a series of huge red brick boxes, has harsh rectangular lines in contradiction to the soft contours of the medieval city. We could cope with that but it was the inside, like a vast (and confusing) grey bunker, which so disappointed us. There is nothing either to delight the eye or to be welcoming to the audience. A great building like this should be a reflection of the life of the community. It should have a buzz and a warmth to it. Instead the people were dwarfed by the long corridors and the cavernous auditorium and its muted light.

Too many moans for one blog! Bruges itself is a wonderful city, with its 50 shops selling chocolates and numerous others selling embroidery and lace, and some superb and very well mounted museums; its narrow cobbled streets and beautiful buildings a constant delight. Although full of tourists like us (in three days groups from four different nations stayed in our small hotel) a sense of a peaceful town is preserved, even when you have to dodge the cyclists and the horse-drawn carriages. Reservations about the ballet and a negative reaction to the Concert Hall in no way spoiled the visit for us.

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Dimitry Shostakovich (1906 - 1975)

In this the year of the Russian composer’s centenary, his music is being played everywhere in celebration of perhaps the finest music talent of the twentieth century. His inventive and spontaneous music (he rarely corrected his original thoughts) can never be separated from the political circumstances through which he lived. The worst of Stalinism, however, was still in the future when, still a student, he wrote his first symphony. I heard it this week performed by the superb Philharmonia Orchestra under its peerless conductor, Christoph von Dohnanyi.

The symphony may be the work of a young man handling with almost feverish haste the results of his studies of Stravinsky, Mahler, Berg and Bartok, but it has the undeniable personality of a composer who already wants to amaze his listeners with frequent key and rhythmical changes, as idea chases idea culminating in as exultant and overwhelming a climax as any in the classical genre. The orchestra played with a precision and, when it needed to, a power that gives credibility to the suggestion that it is Britain’s premier orchestra. Certainly it must be our most innovative and representative orchestra, with residencies in Bedford, Leicester, Basingstoke and Bristol, as well as in Paris and Bruges.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard was the soloist in the second half, and I had the advantage of hearing him interviewed before the concert. A delightful and cultivated man, he is a keen advocate of contemporary music. Having Pierre Boulez as his mentor when only 19 and winning the 1973 Messiaen Competition were no doubt partly responsible for his wish to balance a classical training with a commitment to new music. He often plays music by the British composer, George Benjamin, neglected in his own country but performed on the continent. This evening he was playing with delicate skill and evident delight, Beethoven’s 4th Piano Concerto. It was an enchanting performance, with total rapport between orchestra and soloist, in this ‘cat and mouse’ concerto.

It was interesting to see an unconventional lay-out of the orchestra. Second violins were to the right of the conductor, violas and cellos in a fan in front of him and at the rear of the orchestra behind the horns and woodwind, the double bass, lending a dependably solid back-up to the sound. Where we were seated behind the orchestra it seemed to work well. Adrian Boult used to have the second violins where the cellos usually are, as well. There is a constant dialogue between the two sets of strings and it makes sense this way. Today Vernon Handley preserves the same practice. I just felt a bit sorry for the players at the last desk of second violins, their backs squeezed against the bass drum on one side and menaced by the cymbals and the side drum on the other.
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Solomon Cutner : Master of his art

Temporary gloom has engulfed our home – the CD player is broken. The loss has sent me back to some of my remaining L.P.’s, and I have been listening in particular to recordings by the legendry pianist, Solomon (professionally he never used his family name). He was the seventh son of an East End master-tailor. In flight from his ambitious teacher, Mathilde Verne (his first public performance taking place when he was only eight years old), he studied in Paris and rebuilt his confidence. He toured Europe before and after the war, making annual visits to the U.S.A. in the 40’s and 50’s. He gave the first performance of Arthur Bliss’s Piano Concerto (Adrian Boult conducting) in New York.

I saw him perform only once. At my school! Like all the artists who appeared there the poor man had to play on the school grand piano. I recall his characteristic look into the middle distance as if he was communing with the music, his head slightly to one side. In this case the delight in his expression was mixed with the distaste he obviously felt at the imperfections of the instrument he was presented with.

My L.P.’s include Mozart concertos and sonatas together with Beethoven and Brahms concertos. He was a beautifully poised and refined pianist, with a virtuoso’s technique, totally at the service of the composer. The critic William Hadley says his playing was ‘serious, understated, refined, purposeful.’ Some people found him cool, even detached and although marvelling at his total control, the delicacy and certainty of his art, I have had sympathy with that view. Until now. For I have been listening again to his performance of the Brahms second piano concerto.

It is absolutely stunning and I have been bowled over by it. Everything about it. The newly formed Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Issay Dobrowen plays with brilliance and precision on a 1947 mono recording, the strings harsh but the total sound amazing for its age with enormous presence; a real sense of being there. One critic suggests – and I agree- that this is a performance against which all other recordings should be judged, including the famed Emil Gilels recording.

Solomon was commissioned to record all the Beethoven piano sonatas. Half way through the project he became aware that his fingers were slipping and a few months later he suffered a massive stroke which paralyzed the whole of one side of his body. He was 57 and never played in public again. Tragic for him, for he was at the peak of his powers, it was an immeasurable loss to music. But we still have his recordings, and they help us to share his unique insight into the works of the great composers, of whom he was both brilliant interpreter and faithful servant.

B.R.

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra

We have been staying with dear friends in the great city of Liverpool – designated as the European Capital of Culture in 2008, and had the added pleasure of hearing the City’s own orchestra in the excellent acoustic of their spacious concert hall.

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the oldest concert-giving organisations in the world, and the second oldest in Britain. The origins of its concert series dates back to 1840. The Orchestra acquired the title 'Royal' in 1957. In 1991 it was the first organisation to be granted the freedom of the City of Liverpool and a further honour of Meritorious Service was granted by the City in 1997. It was a good feeling to be amongst an audience proud of its orchestra, comparable to the affection Manchester has for the Halle.

It was a colourful concert designed for pleasure and conducted with panache by Martyn Brabbins. It began with some sophisticated ballet music by Shostakovich followed by Saint-Saens Violin Concerto No. 3 played by the elegant German violinist Viviane Hanger. The work was originally written for Pablo Sarasate whom we met in these articles in September 2005, and is full of the brilliance one associates with this composer. After the interval we heard Ravel’s ‘La Valse’ with its superb evocation of a lost world of Viennese opulence, ending with its furious and bitter climax.

Finally an electric performance of Rachmaninov’s ‘Symphonic Dances, his last composition and a great favourite of mine. Although I have had two recordings of the work, I have never been present at a performance before. It’s an exhilarating yet ultimately disturbing piece, and Brabbins and his fine orchestra caught the rhythmic athleticism of the dances quite perfectly for me. Fascinated by the virtuoso writing for the orchestra – everybody busy it seems all the time - I was bowled over by its impact. I can hear it still.

We were not the only visitors to the city. The previous evening there had been a concert of local talent in the Philharmonic Hall to an invited audience, as part of the extraordinary visit-in-tandem of Condoleezza Rice and Jack Straw to the N.W. Dr. Rice was staying in the hotel where we had a meal before our concert. As a consequence the city was full of police and protesters : plenty of the former, more of the latter.

B.R.