Budapest Festival Orchestra

The composition dates of the two violin concertos by Hungarian composer, pianist and ethnomusicologist Béla Bartók are separated by thirty years and provide a snapshot of his creative process at vastly different points in his life. The first concerto (1907–8) had a rare emotional relevance: it was dedicated to the violinist Stefi Geyer, the object of Bartók’s affections, and showcases different aspects of her personality. This two‐movement work is reminiscent of the works of Strauss and Liszt. The lamenting theme of the first movement represents Bartók’s unrequited love for Stefi, whose theme is repeated with tonal variation. This is followed by a lively second movement, with brilliant sections of arpeggios and scales, as well as whimsical leaps. The second concerto (1937) is from a time in the composer’s life when folk music had become a firm characteristic of his works, and explores more adventurous harmonies than the first. One of the great Classical and Romantic works, the neo‐Classical concerto also contains elements of Baroque and Renaissance music, giving it an historical dimension.

Highlights are the beautiful canon of the second‐movement theme and the reappearance in the third movement of the theme from the first, this time in a rousing triple‐time dance.

Internationally acclaimed violinist Thomas Zehetmair has enjoyed a remarkable career, performing and recording all over the world. He has also become equally sought‐after as a conductor and is currently Musical Director of the Northern Sinfonia (UK).

Recorded in July 1995 at the Italian Institute, Budapest.

Contains liner notes on the pieces.

Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók were Hungary’s two most important composers in the 20th century. They were both friends and colleagues, working separately and together to document and preserve folk music from Hungary and its surrounding regions. The music they collected strongly influenced their own compositions. Decca was one of the first major record companies to invest in recordings of the choral music of Kodály. Perhaps spurred by the success of István Kertész’s recording of Psalmus Hungaricus, they continued to record a number of the composer’s choral works under the direction of László Heltay. All of these recordings are collected over a double-CD, coupled with Bartók’s Cantata Profana, one of Sir Georg Solti’s last recordings, for which he provides very moving commentary in the booklet.

'In full sail' (his original title for the second movement) could be a motto for the whole symphony. Here is the young Mahler, full of optimism. We hear his love of nature and beauty, and his childhood memories. Fragments of distant military music, birdsong and Yiddish folk tunes come to his yet untormented mind. These episodes are real jewels, especially the Viennese trio in the second movement, the brief Klezmer music, then the Schubert-like Lied (did he have the Lindenbaum in mind?) in the third; and the poetic, gentle melody that interrupts the stormy final movement. Admirable too is the architecture, as the composer completes his journey from hell to paradise - dall’inferno al paradiso - in the footsteps of his idol Beethoven. Mahler was in his late twenties when the world made acquaintance with his first symphony. It was in the Hungarian capital Budapest, and circumstances were difficult. In the diffuse acoustics of the Vigadó Hall, surrounded by hatred and mistrust, Mahler experienced his first major flop. Since then, at each performance I feel that we Hungarians have a moral duty to convince audiences that this is a perfect and exceptionally beautiful masterpiece.

Iván Fischer (from liner notes)

Having made revolutionary changes, during the 1830s and 40s, in both piano performance and composition, Liszt was hardly less innovative in his relationship with the orchestra. He is generally credited with having created the genre of the symphonic poem, in which a narrative or extra-musical idea is depicted within a structural framework usually associated with an abstract symphonic movement. In 1974 and 1977 Sir Georg Solti recorded five of the composer’s Tone Poems as well as the Mephisto Waltz No. 1 with the London Philharmonic and the Orchestre de Paris. With fabled ‘Decca Sound’, these recordings have been much sought after by collectors. Recently reissued in the (limited) Liszt Edition, they are now made available generally as a 2CD set.

The coupling is a much-praised version of the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies, in orchestrations by both the composer as well as Doppler, by Iván Fischer, considered one of the most important conductors of our time. The interpretations were unforgettably described by Gramophone, on their first appearance, as ‘frisky as foals and as flavoursome as goulash’. Even though he grew up in a family in which German was spoken, and although he left Hungary at a young age, Liszt regarded himself as a Hungarian, and he took considerable pride in that fact. Nevertheless, Liszt and Hungary did not always understand each other. He promoted the idea that Hungary’s true national music was the music of the Gypsies, not realising that many of the melodies played by Gypsy bands were in fact composed (but not written down) by Hungarian landowners whose families did not appreciate Liszt’s misattributions – particularly because the Gypsies were not highly regarded in Hungary. This, however, does nothing to diminish the popularity of the Hungarian Rhapsodies, six of which were orchestrated in conjunction with Franz Doppler, a flute virtuoso and a composer in his own right who met Liszt in 1854 and began orchestrating several of his rhapsodies three years later.

A new dimension is added to the marvellous transition from the simple horn melody to a symphony when it is played on natural horns. Why did Schubert choose horns? Three notes sound open, the next stopped, the next stopped in a different way, like a melody roughly hewn from marble. Only when the oboe takes over is the unevenness polished away, removing limitations and barriers and transporting us into a magical realm of eternity. I must say that I find this transition most touching if the natural horn players do their best to equalize, to overcome their natural unevenness – like handicapped athletes do. Small C-clarinets and narrow trombones give this symphony a special colour. The woodwinds have a leading role, playing all the Viennese songs, serenades, popular tunes and dances. Even if it is an orchestral work, here and there it feels like the seventh volume of Schubert’s Lieder. Iván Fischer

Iván Fischer The partnership between Iván Fischer and his Budapest Festival Orchestra has proved to be one of the greatest success stories in the past 25 years of classical music. Fischer introduced several reforms, developed intense rehearsal methods for the musicians, emphasizing chamber music and creative work for each orchestra member. Intense international touring and a series of acclaimed recordings for Channel Classics have contributed to Iván Fischer's reputation as one of the worlds most visionary and successful orchestra leaders.

Despite occasional successful staging’s of this opera, it is concert performances that stir up the feelings of audiences most. I have witnessed many times in performances of this psycho-drama that listeners, staring at the faces of the two singers for sixty minutes, or following a surtitled or printed libretto translation during Bartók’s deeply emotional music, were confronted with themselves.

The prologue is very important; this is in fact a story about us. Usually, after the opera has ended, discussions break out, dividing men and women. Whereas everybody seems to understand why Judit cannot resist her desire to open all the doors, Bluebeard’s character remains controversial. Is it right or wrong, necessary or unnecessary to keep certain doors closed? Why does he need to lock Judit up after she has discovered his secrets? Is the blood real, or does it exist only in Judit’s fearful imagination? This Bluebeard is not a killer, even if he has a bad reputation and Judita sees blood everywhere.

All the earlier wives are alive in his heart, behind closed doors. Bartók, who was himself a closed, shy man, seems to have been fascinated by strange-looking characters who turn out to feel endless love. This links Bluebeard to the Miraculous Mandarin.

NB: Re-issue licensed from Decca Music Group Limited, a division of Universal Music Group – original cat. no. 4646012

'Whereas the first set had featured predominantly Czech dances (with the exception of the second which evoked the Ukranian dumka — not, strictly speaking, a dance), the second set is more broadly Slavonic, incorporating Slovak, Polish, Serbian and Russian elements in addition to Dvorák’s favourite melancholy dumka strains. In these sixteen highly varied and colourful dances, Dvorák had fulfilled his original brief to perfection, creating stylised, even idealised dance fantasias which inter - mingle folk elements with his own inspired melodies so effectively, so disarmingly and so artistically that for the most part they have defied attempts by musicologists to uncover the folk sources. Dvorák justified his approach in 1894: From the rich stores of Slavonic folk music, in its Hungarian [i.e. Slovak], Russian, Bohemian and Polish varieties, the composers of the day have derived, and will continue to derive, much that is charming and novel in their music. Nor is there anything objectionable in this, for if the poet and painter base much of their best art on national legends, songs and traditions, why should not the musicians?' Iván Fischer

Iván Fischer is founder and Music Director of the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Principal Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington D.C. The partnership between Iván Fischer and his Budapest Festival Orchestra has proved to be one of the greatest success stories in the past 25 years of classical music. Fischer introduced several reforms, developed intense rehearsal methods for the musicians, emphasizing chamber music and creative work for each orchestra member. Intense international touring and a series of acclaimed recordings for Philips Classics, later for Channel Classics have contributed to Iván Fischer's reputation as one of the world's most visionary and successful orchestra leaders.

This pair of symphonies was written solely to satisfy Dvorák's own poetic muse. In the keys of G major and its relative minor, E minor, they can be regarded as representing two sides of the same coin. The Eighth, composed in Dvorák’s summer residence at Vysoká deep in the Bohemian countryside, is indisputably “From the Old World” and rooted in Central Europe — “a work singing of the joy of green pastures, of summer evenings, of the melancholy of blue forests, of the defiant merry-making of the Czech peasants”, to quote the conductor Václav Talich, while the Ninth, composed in the claustrophobic surroundings of New York and intended as a greeting “From the New World”, is steeped in the composer’s “unappeasable yearning for his native soil” (from: liner notes)

Iván Fischer is founder and Music Director of the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Principal Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington D.C. The partnership between Iván Fischer and his Budapest Festival Orchestra has proved to be one of the greatest success stories in the past 25 years of classical music. Fischer introduced several reforms, developed intense rehearsal methods for the musicians, emphasizing chamber music and creative work for each orchestra member. Intense international touring and a series of acclaimed recordings for Philips Classics, later for Channel Classics have contributed to Iván Fischer's reputation as one of the world's most visionary and successful orchestra leaders.