Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1979. július-december (33. évfolyam, 27-49. szám)

1979-09-20 / 35. szám

Thursday, Sept. 20. T979.- AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZÓ . 9 The Esterházy Palace at Fertőd THt MAIN LNTKANCH “I discovered Versailles at Eszterhaza”, wrote Prince Rohan, the French ambassador to Vienna in the 18th century after visiting Miklós Esterházy. At Eszterhaza (now called Fertőd) the Hungarian nobility certainly managed to recreate the French atmosphere of the age. The palace is an outstanding creation of Baroque architecture in Hungary, al­though the splendour of Eszterhaza is by no means limited to its palace, but includes a group of buil­dings like the Opera /where Haydn worked for a long time/, the Music House, Puppet Theatre, Art Gallery, etc. These buildings, together with the park, hunting grounds and surrounding villages, comprised one single harmonious composition. To­day they have largely been reconstructed and att­ract many visitors. The Lend of Angels Angyalföld / land of angels/ is still the official name of Budapest’s 13th district, one of the biggest and most densely populated in the Hungarian capi­tal, a working-class district with 150.000 residents. What is the origin of the name? There are several explanations, each with some historical justifica­tion. According to one of the explanations, in the first half of the last century a wealthy citizen built a grinding mill beside the Rákos stream that runs through the district; the local people referred to this simply as the “devil’s mill”. It is said that the people living on- the other side of the stream began to call the area where their own miserable houses stood, the “land of angels”. It was only recently that the infamous “Tripolis”, where the Horthy regime cTowded thousands of working-class families iiTto shanties and hovels, was finally demolished. The foundations of the new high-rise buildings are now being built on the site. It was also only in the past few years that really intensive housing construction and radical demoli­tion of run-down areas began in the district. Bet­ween 1976 and 1985 a total of 14.000 apartments are being built from state funds, with factory aid and under private group-construction projects. The new residents have already moved in to around a quarter of ehe apartments. Growing interest in Hungarian Museums More visitors than ever before visited Hungary’s museums and galleries last year - 16 million - com­pared with 14 million in 1977. Several new muse­ums and galleries opened, and the number of tou­ring exhibitions increased. At Szentendre, galleries devoted to the works of Jenő Barcsay and Jenő Kercnyi have opened, and so has a branch of the National Gallery. In Pecs a memorial gallery to Béla Uitz has been established to contain the works he bequeathed to the city, and a permanent exhibition to József Rippl-Ronai has been mounted in Kaposvár. The several new local museums and displays of folk art include ones at Szenna (Somogy County), Mecseknádasd (Baranya County) and Atany (Heves County). The many special events held at museums and galleries helped attract new visitors. These included competitions, specialized study circles, public cam­paigns, introductory lectures and guided tours of art collections. This year several foreign exhibitions came to Hungary. Works by Flemish impressionists were on display at the Museum of Fine Art in Budapest, al­so exhibition of paintings by Cuban artists, while paintings and drawings by the Dresden artist Hans Teo Richter and by English Pre-Raphaelites will be shown at the National Gallery. CULTURAL SCENE Professor Horst Frenz, who heads the compara­tive literature department at Bloomington Universi­ty, has received an honorary degree from the Attila József University in Szeged, southern Hungary. Over several decades Prof. Frenz has turned his depart­ment into an internationally famed center for the study and teaching of comparative literature. In the early 1960’s, he was one of the first American scholars of literature to visit Hungary. Since then he has lectured in Hungary several times ancj con. ducted a six-week course is Szeged. Gerald Larner, critic of the Guardian of England, had appreciative words for Hungarian pianist, And­rás Schiff’s recent recital at Rosehill in England, particularly for his rendering of Bach’s Partita No. 6. in E minor: “As a competitor at Leeds in 1975, András Schiff displayed an unusual interest in Bach’s keyboard music. The eccentricities of those days have been expunged -the octave transpositions replaced by changes of coloring almost as vivid as changes of registration on the harpsichord - and his interpretation offer the optimum combination of regularity and imagination.” Norwegian teachers are to study musical educa­tion and the Kodály method in Hungary , while Hungarian industrial design teachers study the tea­ching of crafts in Norway, as part of a comprehen­sive cultural, scientific and technical exchange ag­reement that runs till 1981. TO OUR READERS HERITAGE has recently acquired a limited stock of George Lang’s THE CUISINE OF HUNGARY. “Immensely edifying”, Craig Claiborne "said of this cookbook, and Gael Green, in New York Ma­gazine commented: “THE CUISINE OF HUNGARY is exactly what a visit to an unexplored kitchen ought to be: history, anthro­pology, sociology, gossip and a cooking primer* This fascinating cookbook is yours — FREE — if you act NOW! Renew your own subscription to HERITAGE for $ 3.00, and send us a new subscrip­tion at $ 3.00 (for a total of $ 6.00), HERITAGE, 130 East 16th Street, New York, New York 10003. Please send me a copy of THE CUISINE OF HUNGARY Name:---------------------------------------------­Address:------------------------Zip no:---------­I enclose $ 6.00 — (check or money order) for my renewal suberipition to HERITAGE — and a new HERITAGE subscripition to be sent Name:--------------------------------------------­Address:----------------------------Zip no: —

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