Bartok, Kodaly, Ligeti - Hungarian Songs
£9.45
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Label: Brilliant Classics
Cat No: 96926
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Vocal/Choral
Release Date: 28th July 2023
Contents
Works
Hungarian Folksongs (5), Sz33 BB97Hungarian Folksongs (8), Sz64
Hungarian Songs (10), BB43
Hungarian Folk Music
Songs (5) on Poems by Janos Arany
Artists
Katalin Karolyi (mezzo-soprano)Klara Wurtz (piano)
Works
Hungarian Folksongs (5), Sz33 BB97Hungarian Folksongs (8), Sz64
Hungarian Songs (10), BB43
Hungarian Folk Music
Songs (5) on Poems by Janos Arany
Artists
Katalin Karolyi (mezzo-soprano)Klara Wurtz (piano)
About
The Ten Hungarian Folk Songs from 1906 (BB43), Bartók’s earliest and still quite rudimentary but imaginative and very sensitive folk-song arrangements, were collected by the 25-year-old himself mostly in three regions of the Hungarian countryside: near Budapest, Békéscsaba, and the lake Balaton. This set, from which we can listen to four arrangements on this CD, has never been offered by Bartók to be published. Having collected peasant music from regions of the Hungarian Kingdom where significant Romanian and Slovak minorities lived, Bartók immediately became intrigued by the peculiarities – and from his point of view, musical freshness – of both nations’ songs and instrumental dances. His reverence for the folklore of the Slovaks can be felt in the five arrangements of the Falún (Village Scenes) series (BB87a), composed in 1924 and based on folk songs from the Zólyom (in Slovakian: Zvolenská) region of what was then Upper Hungary (now Slovakia) he collected in 1917 from village women. These arrangements of bursting energy, enchantingly deep emotionality and transcendence also bear testimony to Bartók’s discovery of Stravinsky’s music which he was galvanised by in the early 1920s. The texts are sung by Katalin Károlyi in Hungarian here, not in their original Slovak-language version.
Before leaving Hungary for Austria and West Germany after the fall of the 1956 revolution, György Ligeti (1923–2006) not only collected folk music in his native Transylvania but also worked for the Institute for Folklore in Bucharest and Kolozsvár in the late 1940s. Thus, in his twenties and thirties, he followed the footsteps of his idols, Bartók and Kodály. In the last months of 1952, Ligeti set to music five poems by János Arany, a leading figure of 19th-century Hungarian poetry. Both text and music are deeply rooted in Hungarian folk songs; indeed, most of Ligeti’s melodies, or parts thereof, could be actual folk songs, just like Arany’s texts from almost a century earlier could be folk-song texts. The last piece is an exception, being a daring musical setting of Arany’s 1868 Hungarian translation of Robert Burns’s humorous song The Deil’s Awa Wi’ Th’ Exciseman (1792).
Sung by Katalin Károlyi, one of Hungary’s foremost mezzo-sopranos, whose repertoire stretches from Renaissance to contemporary music. She sang and recorded with William Christie, and György Ligeti wrote for her his important work for voice and ensemble Sippal, Dobbal.... Klára Würtz’s extensive discography for Brilliant Classics and Piano Classics brought her many prizes and top reviews, among which a Gramophone Editor’s Choice and a 10/10 on Classicstoday.com.
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