PRO-7192: Great Hungarian Music for Cello & Piano

Ernst Von Dohnanyi (1877-1960) was once often-represented on symphonic programs by such works as Ruralia Hungarica and his Suite in f-sharp Minor, and in chamber music concerts by his charming string trio Serenade in C Major or his Piano Quintet Opus 1. Today, if his name provokes the memory of a specific composition it is likely to be a relatively minor composition, the concerto-like Variations on a Nursery Song. Though time has been kinder to this Hungarian-born, academy-trained musician’s reputation as a virtuoso pianist, he nevertheless composed well-made music, much of which is undeservedly neglected. The present work, Sonata for Cello and Piano in B-flat Major, Opus 8, was first played by the composer and cellist Ludwig Lebell in London, in 1899. It is only natural that the young man’s composition should have points of contact with such predecessors as the cello sonatas by Beethoven and Brahms. But there is also much which bespeaks an original turn of mind, particularly in the use of pedal tones in movement three, and in the treatments accorded the theme in the nine variations which comprise the final movement. In a successful attempt to achieve a kind of cyclic unification of the whole piece, the fourth movement’s theme has been derived from a melody found in the previous movement, and the variations suggest aspects of each of the earlier movements. The final variation leads to a triumphant and virtuosic coda which brings the work to a satisfying conclusion. Written with a sure hand, and reflecting a good understanding of the medium, it may well be that Dohnanyi’s sonata will earn for itself a more prominent place in the repertoire when it becomes better known.
Béla Bartók (1881-1945) is considered by many to be the first great ethnomusicologist. As a young man he travelled and lived among the peoples inhabiting such areas as Transylvania and Transdanubia, recording their native music on Edison-type wax cylinders, and later transcribing, analyzing and categorizing these songs and dances. Because Bartók so thoroughly integrated the rhythms and scales he encountered into his own musical vocabulary it is not always easy to draw a sharp distinction between what is original and what is folk-derived in his music. In the present instance, the melodies are all credited with respect to their origins. Joc Cu Bata (dance with sticks), is from Mezoszabad, Transylvania. Braul, subtitled “waistband dance”, comes from Egres, now Yugoslavia. Pe Loc, described by the composer as a “stamping dance”, is from Egres, while Buciumeana, or “Hornpipe Dance”, derives from Butschyum, Transylvania. The two final movements, Poarca Romaneasa, a Roumanian Polka from the Belenyes district of Bihar and Maruntel, a quick dance from Belenyes, are played without pause. Throughout, in the settings, the composer has preserved the spirit if not the letter of their original folk contexts. Bartók himself arranged these folk dances for several mediums, including string orchestra, chamber orchestra and violin accompanied by piano. Doubtless he would have approved of this arrangement for cello and piano by Luigi Silva.
Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967), fellow countryman, friend and colleague of Béla Bartók, is well-known to cellists as the composer of a fiendishly difficult and striking sonata for unaccompanied cello. Less well-known to the broader musical world are his rhapsodic Three Chorale Preludes of 1924, freely based on chorale preludes by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), utilizing the same hymns. As every student of counterpoint knows, the chorale prelude in Bach’s time had become virtually a standardized improvisatory musical form based on traditional chorals. Kodály appears to have drawn inspiration as much from the profound faith and dramatic force in the music of the great master as from the religious content of the chosen texts themselves. The first, Oh what surely is our life! is from the Newly Expanded Complete Songbook published at Braunschweig in 1661. The second text is the familiar Lord’s Prayer and the third, Christ, Who Brings Salvation, is from a hymn by Michael Weisse written in 1531 and later used by Bach in the Saint John Passion. Noteworthy also is that this 20th-century composer and teacher is known to have identified Hungary’s struggle for renewal with the broader issues of spiritual salvation in general.
Jenö Hubay (1858-1937), virtuoso violinist, teacher and composer, passed the traditions of the great 19th-century violinists Joachim and Vieuxtemps on to his pupils: Jelly d’Aranyi, Franz von Vecsey and the internationally celebrated virtuoso, Joseph Szigeti. Hubay’s characteristic and violinistic showpiece, Scènes de la Csárda is widely-acknowledged as representative of its genre. No. 5, entitled (in translation) “Waves of the Balatón” (a large and shallow lake in central Hungary) preserves in broad outlines the general form of the Czardas, or “Inn Dance”. Such dances most often have a recitative-like, improvisatory “Lassu”, and a faster portion called a “Friss” or “Friska”. Here the faster and the more lugubrious impulses are somewhat commingled, with alternations between the two, but the final “Friska” is unmistakably the capstone of the piece, driving the dance to its conclusion. Hubay originally composed the piece for his own instrument, and the fireworks and character of the original have been preserved in this new adaptation for cello and piano by Antony Cooke and Armin Watkins. This premiere recording is dedicated by the performers, with gratitude and admiration, to the distinguished Hungarian-American violinist, conductor and pedagogue, Dr. Andrew Galos.

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