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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
January 25, 2017
"We can hear Kodály and Bartók and recognise them as Hungarian...very few of us speak Hungarian, but the music itself speaks to more people."
The conductor Leonard Slatkin certainly put his finger on the matter: were appreciation of Hungarian music limited to those with knowledge of the Hungarian language few of us would have any familiarity with either of the composers he cited, or, indeed, any other Hungarian.
In the absence of any kind of exit poll, I cannot attest to the proportion of Wednesday's audience fluent in Magyar; however, while I suspect it was very small, their appreciation was anything but.
I was slightly (oh, alright, more than slightly) puzzled by the first item on the menu. "Hungarian Inspiration" was the title of the evening, yet Srul Irving Glick was born, lived and died in Toronto. If he was indeed of Hungarian origin I can find no evidence for it (and The New Grove — surprisingly — has no entry for him at all).
But whether Glick's Suite Hébraïque No.1 had any Hungarian in its DNA or not, the music is very fine and, from its very opening bars, summoned forth rich, nay, sumptuous tones from the Galiano Ensemble, even with their slightly diminished numbers (the four members of the Lafayette Quartet, section principals all, being otherwise engaged in preparation for their Shostakovich cycle which begins in a few days' time).
The elegiac opening movement featured an eloquent viola solo from Kay Cochran; the charming second movement is in 4/4 yet had the lilt of a waltz; the third movement was all determined syncopation in contrast with the sombre fourth. The fifth movement opens with questioning violins (firsts and seconds) to which the "answer", from cellos, later violas and bass, is at first ominous before becoming distinctly threatening in nature. The finale seemed to shake this threat off and was highly rhythmic; once again, although the music was in common time it felt, because of the phrasing, distinctly otherwise.
The remaining composers on the programme were all actually born in what is now Hungary, although what passed for "Hungarian" music in Ferenc Liszt's time was almost invariably gypsy in origin.
Angélus! Prière aux anges gardiens (Prayer to the guardian angels) is best-known as the first movement of the Troisième Année of Liszt's Années de Pelerinage (Years of Pilgrimage); and, therefore, most often heard in the version for piano.
However, there also exist versions for string quintet and string orchestra; and it was this last that we heard, in an intensely devotional performance whose luminous opening and close framed a superbly-controlled crescendo to an ecstatic climax. This piece alone was worth the price of admission.
Unlike his countrymen Bartók and Kodály, Leo Weiner was not an active collector of folk music; although he sometimes included folk melodies in his own works, his style was essentially late Romantic.
One of the works informed by folk music is Weiner's Divertimento No.2 (the second of five), completed in 1938, whose subtitle is "Hungarian Folk Melodies". An essentially sunny work, it steadfastly refuses to acknowledge the storm clouds which were threatening both Weiner's homeland and the rest of Europe.
The opening Wedding Dance, with its spicy chords and hints of earthiness, was imbued with a delicious sense of rubato, wonderfully relaxed yet precise.
The second movement, Joking, featured profound pizzicatos redolent of digging in the ribs — only funnier — while the unexpected truncation of the apparently about-to-be-repeated B section of the music summoned forth a ripple of amusement from the audience.
The short third movement, Plaintive Song, was all of that, but lush in texture, while the extremely lively Swineherd's Song (surprising they still have the energy after taking care of the pigs), was perhaps the most echt-Hungarian in feel and featured several deftly-handled abrupt temp change before its whirlwind final bars.
"The newspapers are full of military articles, they have taken defense measures on the more important passes etc. — military preparedness. I am also worried about whether I shall be able to get home from here if this or that happens. Fortunately I can put this worry out of my mind if I have to..."
Bél Bartók's letter to his eldest son (also Béla) was written on August 18, 1939, the day after he completed (in just over two weeks) his Divertimento for String Orchestra, at the home of its commissioner, the Swiss conductor Paul Sacher, who had previously commissioned Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and had, on this occasion, asked for a somewhat less technically challenging work.
Wednesday's concert closed with a superb performance of the Bartók, in which the spectre that was haunting Europe is clearly felt. The opening movement was given with great intensity, from its bracing opening to its essentially unresolved ending. This is uneasy music, sinister when it is not downright threatening; any hint of cheerfulness was clearly simply whistling in the wind.
The wonderfully atmospheric "night music" of the slow movement built to a big, disturbed climax before subsiding to its still uneasy close.
The exuberant finale features an almost concerto grosso-like contrasting of full ensemble and soloists (Müge Büyükçelen, Victoria Lindsay, Kay Cochran and Martin Bonham, all excellent in this regard). A lilting pizzicato section led to the dazzling final coda which brought the audience to their feet and the evening to a close.
Another first-class evening's musicmaking from the Galiano Ensemble.
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