6alanta dances marosszek dances concerto for orchestra
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THE ONLY STEREO PERFORMANCES OF THE CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA
AND MAROSSZEK DANCES AVAILABLE
STEREO "360 SOUND"
COLUMBIA
CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA MAROSSZEK DANCES
6ALANTA DANCES
Produced by Thomas Frost
ORMANDY CONDUCTS KODALY
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA
Side 1
CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA (i8:ss) Side 2
DANCES OF GALANTA fisur) DANCES OF MAROSSZEK (u:26) The selections are ASCAP.
Engineering: Edward T. Graham and John Guerriere
IN MEMORIAM-Zoltan Kodaly
Born in Kecskemet, Hungary, December 16, 1882 Died in Budapest, Hungary, March 6, 1967
My first encounter with Zoltan Kodaly took place when
I was ten years old and had just become a pupil of Jeno
Hubay at the Academy of Music in Budapest. Kodaly
was Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the
Academy, and he impressed us as being a very serious
and very critical man who never for a moment relaxed his
authority. I remember once when he asked us to submit
compositions so that he could evaluate our progress, he
looked at my composition, turned it upside down and
asked. What is this?" I replied, "This is a modem com¬
position." Without looking at me, he handed my paper
back to me and said, "First, go home and learn about the
triad then come back." Being the youngest student in
the class, I felt that he was picking on me, and it wasn't
until years later that I realized how right he had been.
Kodaly always tried to teach us as individuals. He never
tried to force us to compose his way but rather tried to
correct our mistakes and give us freedom of expression.
My studies in composition were part of my over-all music
education and were not taken with a view to my becoming
a composer. When I became a conductor, I realized that I
would only be an imitative composer because of conduct¬
ing so many creations by other composers, so I gave it up entirely.
Kodaly often called our attention to the great wealth of
folk music in Hungary and Rumania, and he repeatedly
advised us to go out into the countryside and listen to
the peasants singing the songs that had been handed
down to them through generations. He, himself, with
Bela Bartok, spent many months among the peasants,
making notes of everything he heard. He collected hun¬
dreds of folk tunes so did Bartok—and these tunes can
be heard in his music. The music of Kodaly and Bartok is
Stereo MS 7034 Mono ML 6434
COLUMBIA
SDBBB&SflZDS
greatly dissimilar but their basic musical ideas were in¬
spired by the same thing—the songs of the people.
Politically, Kodaly was a liberal, and although he never
became directly involved in political affairs, he was ap¬
pointed Minister of Education after the first Hungarian
revolution, in 1918. He remained a liberal throughout his
life, and the political groups that took over Hungary after
the 1918 revolution respected him for what he was and did not try to influence him.
When Kodaly visited this country with his first wife,
Emma, in November 1946, he was my guest in Philadel¬
phia and I invited him to conduct the first American per¬
formance of his "Peacock Variations." When he walked
onto the stage, the orchestra rose to its feet as a gesture
of respect for this great man. I was proud then to have my
master as my guest conductor in Philadelphia.
This recording was originally planned for release on
Kodaly's eighty-fifth birthday, December 16, 1967. Un¬
fortunately, he did not live to be so honored. Therefore,
this recording must become an "in memoriam" tribute to the great master, Zoltan Kodaly.
Eugene Ormandy
ancient Hungarian folk melodies and dance rhythms.
Kodaly biographer Percy Young has written that Kodaly's
use of folk materials in this work occurs "unconsciously
rather than consciously—as, for instance, in the Concerto,
where the opening seems directly to spring from a Trans-
danubian shepherd's pipe tune."
Kodaly's Marosszek Dances also derive from folk mate¬
rials. Conceived in 1923, the work did not take final shape
until 1927, when Kodaly completed a piano version. Three
years later, he arranged it for orchestra. Kodaly cited his
source materials in an introduction to the printed score:
"It is perhaps no accident that most of the old folk-dance
music has been preserved in the district of Marosszek in
Transylvania and that some dances are even called Maros-
szeki in other regions. . . . Until the war, one could hear
these pieces in every village, played either on a violin or
a shepherd's flute, and old people used to sing them. ...
Brahms's famous Hungarian Dances are an expression of
urban Hungary around the year 1860. ... My Marosszek
Dances have their roots in a much more remote past."
Like the Marosszek Dances, the Galanta Dances hark
back in time. About 1800," Kodaly wrote in the preface
to the score, "some books of Hungarian dances were pub¬
lished in Vienna, and one contained music 'after several
gypsies from Galanta'.. . . The composer has taken his
principal subjects from these ancient sources."
In an article published in 1921, Bela Bartok wrote that
Kodaly's work up to that time had ". . . no connection
with atonal, bitonal or polytonal types of music. The guid¬
ing principle of his work is still balanced tonality. Yet, his
musical language is entirely new and expresses musical
ideas never heard before, thus proving that tonality is still
a legitimate principle of composition."
Bartok himself brought the score of his friend's Concerto
for Orchestra to the United States in 1940, at the begin-
ning of World War II. The work had been commissioned
by the Chicago Philharmonic Society to celebrate its dia¬
mond jubilee, and Kodaly had begun work on it in 1939. The Concerto received its first performance on February
6, 1941, by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the
direction of Frederick Stock, and the composer conducted
the first European performance exactly two years later, on February 6,1943, in Budapest.
The Concerto for Orchestra takes its inspiration from the
concerto grosso of the Baroque period and is flavored with
Galanta is a village in northwestern Hungary where
Kodaly spent seven happy childhood years. The Galanta
Dances were written in 1933, on a commission from the
Budapest Philharmonic Society to mark its eightieth anniversary.
In 1935, the Galanta and Marosszek Dances were com¬
bined to form the score for an unsuccessful ballet pro¬
duced by the Budapest Opera. However, subsequent
dance works utilizing these two scores were produced
successfully in a number of cities throughout Germany.
Library of Congress catalog card number R67-3446 applies to ML 6434/R67-3447 applies to MS 7034.
Other albums by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra:
Stravinsky: Petrushka (Original Version); Kodaly: Hary Janos
Suite .ML 6146/MS 6746* *
Prokofiev: Symphony No. 6, Op. Ill; Hindemith: Symphony Ma¬ this der Maler; Symphonic Metamorphoses . .ML 5962/ML 6562*
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4, Op. 43.ML 5859/MS 6459*
*Stereo
5
Cover photo: Columbia Records Photo Studio—Sandy Speiser,/Manufactured by Columbia Records/CBS, Inc./ 51 w. 52 Street, New York, N.Y./® "Columbia," g "Masterworks," Marcas Reg. Printed in U.S.A.
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