When it comes to the whole Hungarian nationalist movement, Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály would get all the glory. Sure, they did a lot of the legwork, heading out into the field in a race against time to document authentic folk traditions before they were swept away by industrialization. But as director of the Budapest Academy of Music and music director of the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra, Ernő Dohnányi (1877-1960) would exert as much influence over his country’s musical development as that of his folk music mad friends and contemporaries.
On the next “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll give Dohnányi his due. We’ll also hear music by György Ligeti, a composer who survived several totalitarian regimes to become one of the leading composers of the second half of the 20th century.
Dohnányi himself would become the target of character assassination campaigns following World War II. Painted as a Nazi sympathizer by his enemies, he would be investigated and cleared by the U.S. Military Government several times. He has since been defended as a forgotten hero of Holocaust resistance. It was through Dohnányi’s administrations that countless Jewish musicians survived. Also, between the wars, he went to bat for Kodály, a leftist, by refusing to fire him from the Budapest Academy. As a result, Dohnányi too lost his position, although he was later reinstated. Nevertheless, he continued to be eyed with suspicion, and his reputation never fully recovered.
Equally fatal is the fact that much of his music bears a more cosmopolitan stamp than that of the more blatantly “Hungarian” output of his peers. His composition teacher, the German-born Hans von Koessler (known in Hungary as János Koessler) was a cousin of Max Reger. Of course, Koessler also taught Bartók and Kodály. But Dohnányi was perfectly happy nestled in the world of Brahms. For his international career, he adopted the name Ernst von Dohnányi.
Dohnányi’s Piano Quintet in C minor, completed in June of 1895, one month before his 18th birthday, earned Brahms’ stamp of approval. We’ll hear it performed at the 1977 Marlboro Music Festival, by pianist Stephanie Brown, violinists Joseph Genualdi and Mayuki Fukuhara, violist Philipp Naegele, and cellist Lisa Lancaster.
György Ligeti (1923-2006) was born in Transylvania. If anything, his hardships proved even more severe: most of his family was wiped out in the Holocaust, he was conscripted into a forced labor brigade, and he lived for a time under strict communist rule. He survived the violent Soviet putdown of the Hungarian Revolution, and finally escaped with his on-again/off-again wife in a pair of mail sacks, leaping off a night train and crawling for miles through the mud to find safety in Vienna.
Ligeti was that rare bird: an avant-garde composer whose music could actually inspire affection. He rocketed to broader fame when some of his works were used, without permission, in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
The first of Ligeti’s three string quartets, subtitled “Métamorphoses nocturnes,” was written in 1953-54, prior to his flight from Hungary. The work was heavily influenced by Bartók; the composer György Kurtág memorably described it as “Bartók’s seventh string quartet.” Ligeti himself characterized that phase of his career as “prehistoric.” Although performances of Bartók’s quartets were banned under the communist regime, Ligeti was familiar with them through the study of their scores.
Ligeti’s quartet is cast in one continuous movement, but subdivided into seventeen contrasting sections. We’ll hear it performed at the 1996 Marlboro Music Festival by violinists Soovin Kim and Catherine Cho, violist Kirsten Johnson, and cellist Siegfried Palm.
That’s two contrasting works by Hungarian composers buffeted by war and politics, on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network.
Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page
“I am in a prison: one wall is the avant-garde, the other wall is the past, and I want to escape.” – György Ligeti
