Fraternity-Testvériség, 1959 (37. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1959-03-01 / 3. szám

FRATERNITY

3

his exquisite purity of taste, his refined intellectuality and his artistic dignity.”

By the turn of the century he became recognized as one of the greatest living pianists and he maintained his outstanding reputation in the musical world for the coming decades. At his age of 80, when the author of this article was fortunate enough to hear him playing at the opening of the Hungarian Relief, his performance rivaled that of the best young American artists.

Though Dohnányi has shown an amazing creative productivity throughout his life, he is perhaps best known as a composer for his works of his youth and early manhood. He won the King’s Prize with his Symphony in F Major in 1897 and his Piano Concerto No. 1 was awarded with the Bösendorfer Prize in 1899. He completed a mass, three string quartets, a sextet and several other minor works before World War I, among which the Suite in F-Sharp Minor and the Variations on a Nursery Theme are the most popular.

Respect for classical forms, lack of emotional inhibitions in these compositions clearly indicate Brahms’ influence. In a few works, like his great compatriots Bartók and Kodály, Dohnányi also adapted melodic and rhythmic ideas from Hungarian folk music. The most notable of his national compositions are the Variations on a Hungarian Theme and the Ruralia Hungarica, in which he shows a more forceful originality.

In 1946-47, while touring England, he wrote several major works including the famous Concerto No. 3 which was described by the critic of Times as “overbrimming with the exuberant ripeness of decadent romanticism.” His recent work, Concerto No. 2 for Violin and Orchestra, completed in the United States in 1952, reveals a return to Hungarian idioms. His radically revised Symphony No. 2, which he himself conducted in Minneapolis,

Minn., in 1957, put his name once again in the limelight of

public interest.

Dohnányi distinguished himself in still one other field, that of conducting. For 30 years he led the Budapest Philharmonic

Orchestra. In 1925 he made several appearances in the United

States also, but American critics esteemed him more as a pianist than for his work with the baton.

Dohnányi was also successful as a teacher. Between 1905 and 1908 he taught the piano at the Berlin Hochschule where he was appointed to a full professorate in 1908. In 1919 he