Magyar News, 2002. szeptember-2003. augusztus (13. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
2002-12-01 / 4. szám
time the people will have It is called ’’Asszonykám adj egy kis kimenőt” - My lady let me take off for a bit. The choice of the music goes back many decades. They were composed to outlive governments, trends, fashions and to live forever in the hearts of Hungarians. The proof to this was the fact that people in the audience sang along with the singers many times. The primadonna, Gizella Orbán, was a real prima donna. She had a special way to present her songs with a typical Hungarian body language. Her hands were so expressive that one could tell that she not only sings but enjoys it to the upmost. Anna Petrécs was the comedian of the group playing the most comical figures of Hungarian life. The two youngsters, Simona Lelkes, subrett, Anna Petrecs comedian in a scene, we would call the "raglady ” and István Olasz, dancer and singer were excellent additions to the performing group. Holding everything together with the piano music was Árpád Hanzer. Beyond the quality, it was amazing to see how he supported and lead the performers. Petri László is the director of the company that brings Hungarian performers to the United States. He himself is an actor, resides in New York and organizes these tours mostly along the easter part of the country. We are very grateful for his work and I am sure that those Hungarians who missed out on this show will learn from those who attended that it was an other mistake they made in their life. JFB Sándor Márai: Emßers Sándor Marai was one of the leading Hungarian novelists of the Twentieth Century. Bom in 1900 he became well known in Hungary in the 1930's, fled the country after World War II and died in San Diego, California in 1989. Embers was written in 1942, became lost during the chaos of WWII and was rediscovered and published in Germany several years ago. It quickly became a best selling novel in Europe and is now available in hardcover and paperback in the country. The story of Embers involves two men who were the closest of friends through boyhood and as young officers and then separate inexplicably for 41 years. The setting of the novel is the night they finally meet again for dinner in a castle at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains. We, as readers, witness their compelling conversation on this one momentous night as they feint and parry with words, a conversation that takes us on a number of flashbacks to their youth. Gradually, as the night progresses we leam of their past when they were vibrant young men with bright futures during the glamour of La Belle Epoch in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. We also leam of a third vitally important person in this relationship, who is missing from the room, the beautiful Krisztina. The passions that existed in that long past era, described with restraint and finesse by Marai, now exist only as embers, but they are embers which have stayed with them for over forty years and are still too sensitive to address directly. Underlying it all are questions of friendship, loyalty, honor and love. The English translation was done by Carol Brown Janeway. It is published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf (ISBN 0375407561) and in paperback by Vintage Books. Robert Havery HUNGARIANS ON THE ROAD OF HIGH-TECH Charles Simonyi, a computer scientist who joined Microsoft 1981, when it had 40 employees and who helped set its technical strategy for years, is leaving the company to found his own software start-up. Mr. Simonyi left Hungary in 1965, at the age of 17 on a short- term visa and did not return, eventually making his way to the United States. He studied at the University of California at Berkeley, then Stanford, and he worked in the Xerox Research Center, where he was the principal developer of Bravo, a pioneering graphical text-editing program. At Microsoft, Bravo became 1981 Word, one of the most widely used computer programs ever. For years, he led the technical development of Word and Excel. Mr. Simonyi always worked on the technical side of the company as chief architect for a dozen years. He was given the freedom to pursue a softwareengineering research project to refine and commercialize in his new company. This should not affect Microsoft's current business or product development. Mr. Simonyi's start-up company, based in Bellevue, Wash., is called the Intentional Software Corporation. Its goal is to build software tools and technology to make the task of programming less complicated and more productive. He is being joined in founding Intentional Software by another leading researcher in software engineering, Gregor Kiczales. Mr. Kiczales, a computer scientist at the University of British Columbia. Microsoft holds a right to be the first to negotiate with Intentional Software if the company comes up for sale.Intentional Software will employ a handful of programmers from Mr. Simonyi's native Hungary. Excerpts from Steve Lohr Page 5
