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Ferenc Farkas (1905-2000) was one of the longest-lived members of the wave of Hungarian nationalist composers which began with the rise of Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály. A student of Ottorino Respighi in Rome, Farkas blended Respighi’s Latin melodiousness with the Magyar folk-heritage that Bartók and Kodály had made the central element of Hungarian music. His Old Hungarian Dances of the 17th Century have become a staple of the wind-quintet repertoire; the other five works on this disk display the same irrepressible joie de vivre.
Ferenc Farkas: Serenade
I. Allegro
II. Andante espressivo
III. Saltarello
Ferenc Farkas: 4 Pezzi (version for double bass and woodwind quintet)
Ferenc Farkas: Antiche danze ungheresi del 17. secolo (Old Hungarian Dances of the 17th Century)
I. Intrada: Allegro moderato
II. Lento: Moderato maestoso
III. Danza della scapole: Allegro quasi Scherzo
IV. Chorea: Moderato
V. Saltarello: Allegro
Ferenc Farkas: Rondo capriccio (version for violin and woonwind quintet)
Rondo capriccio (version for violin and woonwind quintet)
Ferenc Farkas: Lavottiana
I. Indulas Pannonia fele (March to Pannonia)
II. Menuett (Minuet)
III. Lassu verbunk es figura (Slow Verbunkos and Figura)
IV. Nemet tancnota (German Dance-tune)
V. Rondo Vigadozas a korcsmaban (Rondo in the Inn)
August 2006
*****
“In volume of output, Ferenc Farkas (1905-2000) is something of a Hungarian Villa-Lobos, and his Serenade from 1951 has a touch of the Brazilian composer's fluid fecundity of invention. The Phoebus Quintet perform with deftness, wit and nimble mastery. It's an old cliché of critical special pleading, I know, but here is music which really does deserve to be much better known.”
Click on any of the works listed above for alternative recordings.
I. Allegro