Hungarian Heritage Review, 1988 (17. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1988-06-01 / 6. szám
recognition proved more enduring than Adila’s, inspiring such composers as Ravel, Barto'k and Vaughan Williams to dedicate works to her during the height of her career in the 1920s. The pianistic talents of the third sister, Titi, were of a more modest order, and although she did perform in collaboration with her sisters in their early concerts, she rarely took part in concerts after 1914. It was through his position as piano teacher of Titi that Bartók came to know the Arányi family well. In 1902 he was an advanced student at the Budapest Academy of Music wanting a little extra pocket money; Titi was diligently preparing for admission to the Academy. Bartók found Titi hard-working and a pleasure to teach because of the good foundation laid by her previous piano teachers. As their lessons progressed he began to be drawn into the family circle and to be invited to their parties. Bartók was intrigued by the family. Through their father the girls were related to Joachim, perhaps the greatest German violinist and pedagogue of his age. Yet, under their mother’s French influence, they spoke barely a word of German — a most unusual circumstance in turn-of-the-century Budapest, especially among the middle classes — and used Hungarian or occasionally French at home. Bartók was indeed impressed at such a lack of Germanic “contamination”. He was fully involved in the Hungarian nationalist movement, which had been sparked by the celebrations of the country’s millenium in 1896, and was a proud advocate of the use of the Hungarian rather than German in all domestic and public circumstances. Other aspects of the Arányis’ family life were also attractive to Bartók. Having lost his father at a very young age and been separated from his mother and sister at various times in his youth, Bartók thoroughly enjoyed the boisterous sense of fun in the Arányi household: on several occasions he noted to his mother the infectious enthusiasms of the three sisters and the deleterious effects which these could have upon his Academy studies if he succumbed to them too frequently. Despite their high-spirited parties the Arany is were not socially ostentatious. They kept a simple house, and attracted friends more through the musical and other games which they played than through the provision of rich food, strong drink or elaborate gifts. Bartók, who could not return this hospitality in his humble student dwellings, returned their kindness through his musical gifts. After one wonderful party he wrote an Andante for Adila Arányi simply entitled “In memory of 23 November 1902”. On another occasion he wrote a violin duo for her. Of the three sisters it was Adila whom Bartók found most attractive at this time. He occasionally sent a card to Jelly, who was then barely ten years old, but it was with the sixteen-year-old Adila that Bartók felt most at ease. During one party, indeed, he was gravely embarrassed by a question in the Hungarian game called “how like you this?” He could only blush in reply to the unexpected question “how like you Adila?” For many years they met for afternoons of informal music-making and sustained a regular correspondence in which they swapped musical and social news. It is strange that despite their great talents they never performed together on the public platform in the pre-war years. In early 1909, after various concert successes in central Europe, the Aranyi sisters ventured to travel to England. The tour was probably initiated through Adila’s close friendship with Donald Tovey, one of Britain’s leading younger pianists and scholars. Such was the tour’s success that they returned annually. By 1913 their British activities were so lucrative and enjoyable that they took rooms in London. Their mother stayed with them, while their father, by then a senior police official, remained in Budapest. Because of the First World War and the difficult circumstances in Hungary immediately following its conclusion, Bartók did not meet with the sisters for many years. They had been trapped in Britain at the time that war broke out and only through their high social connections had been able to avoid internment as enemy aliens. With characteristic ingenuity they changed their surname to the pseudo-French form “d’Arányi” and continued to perform and teach as opportunities presented themselves. Their claim on British residence was soon strengthened by Titi’s marriage to a London Treasury official and Adila’s to a London lawyer. It was only in late 1920, when Bartók began to plan a concert tour to Britain, that the chance of reestablishing contacts with the Arányis presented itself. In 1921 the sisters visited Budapest to see their father, and they called on Bartók as well. Although he still enjoyed Adila’s company it was now Jelly to whom he felt most drawn. When he had last seen her she had been a slightly gawky teenager. Now she was a vibrant, charismatic personality in her late twenties. As a critic from the journal Time and Tide had commented in May 1920: Personality counts on the concert platform as much as elsewhere. To ignore its power is as stupid as to grow hysterical about it. Jelly d’Aranyi ha~ a great asset in her appearance. She looks like a picture by Alfred Stevens — at any rate, on this occasion she recalled his portraits, garbed as she was in a full-skirted pink silk dress, her dark hair confined by a pink ribbon — and her physical movement is as rhythmical as her playing. One afternoon Bartók performed various violin-piano works together with her. He was bowled over equally by —continued next page JUNE 1988 HUNGARIAN HERITAGE REVIEW 19
