Magyar Hírek, 1984 (37. évfolyam, 2-26. szám)
1984-03-15 / 5-6. szám
JOB’S REVOLT The Job in this film is of different stuff to his biblical name-sake. Different too is the nature of his trials. This work written by Imre Gyongybssy and Barna Kabay, takes piacé in the middle of the war, in 1943. The atmosphere is becoming increasingly stiffling for Jews and their chance of survival is becoming slighter and slighter. Job and Rose, who live in a village on the Tisza river decide to leave something permanent behind them in the world. They adopt a Christian boy. because they want io leave their values, material and mainly spiritual to him. The colours of what starts out happily become darker and darker. The unruly boy, Lackó, settles down, but the happiness and peace of the family is shattered by the lawlessness which has become the rule in these late years of the war. The step-parents hand over what they can to the boy, though they cannot escape what fate has in store for them. A creaking peasant cart carries them off to their death: yet they are still smiling for they know that their boy will survive. Job’s revolt has thus succeeded. Their heir will keep their humanity, ideas, memory. Gyóngyössy and Kabay have made good use of the various elements in the film. The setting is portrayed in details that are accurate (and believable). The sense of a folk culture is vivid. The events themselves are emotionally charged. Amidst some excellent acting Ferenc Zenthe, who plays the lead, and Gábor Kis Fehér stand out. The directors have succeeded in catching a whole range of changes of mood in the film’s various episodes. Although the storm is gathering overhead, this does not mean that joy, compassion, love and happiness, even though fleeting, are lacking. Nor is humour the least of the colours used on the film’s palette. A i.umber of the reviews here in Hungary raised doubts on the credibility of the basic situation. It was impossible, they claimed, for a Christian child to be adopted by a Jewish couple in Horthy’s Hungary of 1943, tattering as it was towards its final collapse. Perhaps these critics are right, yet it is a circumstance negligeable when placed beside the film’s ultimate message. Gyöngyössy and Kabay portray a specific event, yet raise their story to the typical; the important thing here is not documentary fidelity, but the gesture, the sacrifice, the faith, all, in fact, that is mirrored in the human relations, particularly in the efforts of the old man to overcome. Gábor Szabó, the young cameraman, conjures up a form of life, its customs and rituals in images which bring to mind etchings. For the directors and cameraman, it is enough that there are only signals to inform the viewer of the horrors of the external world: this works admirably. A little is sometimes more than a lot. JÖZSEF VERESS PHOTO: MIKI.ÖS GÁSPÁR Announcement On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the deportation of the Hungarian Jewry, the National Board of Hungarian Jews (MIOK) will hold a number of functions in May, 1984 in memory of the sixhundred thousand who perished. The series of commemorative events will begin on 29th April 1984 with a pilgrimage to Auschwitz-Birkenau. A commemorative service will be held, and wreaths will be laid in the Budapest (Rákoskeresztúr) Jewish cemetery, at the memorial of victims on 13th May. The next day a book- and photo-exhibition “The Past and Present of Jewry” will open in the building of the Rabbinical College in Budapest. Wreaths will be laid at memorial plaques and shrines at various points of Budapest, including the Burial Gardens of Heroes, on 15th May. The new, permanent exhibition in the Jewish Museum will open the same day. MIOK commissioned the COOPTURIST Travel Bureau to organize and handle programmes and trips. This travel bureau will also undertake to meet the accommodation and travel requirements of visitors from all parts of the world. Besides the above programmes, Coopturist will organize cemetery visits and pilgrimages to Jewish memorial sites in the country on request, as well as guided tours to the Sopron and Debrecen synagogues. The postal address of Coopturist is: H-llll, Budapest, Bartók Béla u. 4.; Telephone: 665- 349; Telex: 22-4734. The bureau asks intending visitors to send their requirements to the above address. “Composing is becoming increasingly important to me” Talking to pianist Zoltán Kocsis on talent, his career and his aims Were you a child prodigy, or simply a talented child? “I was considered to be a child prodigy as far as talent went, but not as far as performance. According my teachers, I was highly gifted in musical memory, sense of sound and polyphony.” “My story began the same way as most others: I had a Musica piano .. . I am supposed to have strummed it reasonably well at the age of four. János Viski, the composer visited us once in our home on the Szent István körút and discovered me. 1 began learning the piano formally under the guidance of Magda Szapolcsfinyi, who was the best primary piano teacher of the time and was recommended by Viski. At the Béla Bartók Secondary School which is a specialist music school, I studied in Tamás Fülep’s class, another outstanding music teacher. I also met József Soproni there, who taught musical theory and composition. I received my first piano lessons at the Academy from Pál Kadosa and Ihis assistant professors, György Kurtág and Ferenc Rados. I received my professional send-off in life from Albert Simon, who was the head of the orchestral department, although I was not officially his student.” Í recall that the press took notice of your talent even when you were still at the Academy in the sixties. When did your career began to accelerate? “I won the Hungarian Radio’s Beethoven piano competition in 1970, even though I must add immediately that I did not play very well. By that time, the students of the Academy had received the opportunity to give concerts on their own account, something that had been impossible earlier. Apart from that, I never did anything simply to further my career, because I believe that a career is a natural companion to performances of high-standard. But I should also say that I am not proud of doing nothing to foster my career.” Some people say that Zoltán Kocsis is frittering away his talent. “In all probability they are right. But I am convinced that I am doing so in order to do things nobody other than me would do. After all, I made some recordings with the poet, the late János Pilinszky, and I helped save the radio recordings of Pál Kadosa, which were on the brink of ruin. Of course, one could ask, why at all do I make transcriptions for the piano? Well, Schoenberg was asked why he transcribed Brahms’s piano quartet. My answer is the same as his: I very much like certain works one rarely hears performed in the original form, and after studying their style at length I got to the stage of transcomposing their substance, in a different handling, to my own language, for piano. For instance, I made my transcription of Debussy’ Sirene because Ravel did not do it. Ravel did transcribe the Clouds, and the Fetes, but these needed to be completed. I felt it was my duty to transcribe that work to two pianos. The repertoire for two pianos is anyhow rather meagre. And with such inspiring partners, Dezső Ránki and Ferenc Rados, doing work like this, tiring and stopgap though it may be, gives me pleasure. I believe that someone who carries through everything, someone who does not only move on the surface is not frittering himself away!” Forgive me for always returning to your career, but what you are doing is often compared with those of András Schiff, and Dezső Ránki, since you started at the same time. I believe that such comparison is justified . . . “Yes. This leads back again to the point of how my career would have developed had I concentrated on it, and paid attention only to it. Well..., as far as the career is concerned, I would certainly be further ahead, but then I would not have have spent so much time on music which makes the whole thing worth doing. But I also have plenty of work, even if I do not go abroad as often as Ránki or Schiff. At the moment I am getting ready to go to Geneva, and later I will have a series of guest performances with tlhe Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra. In the summer I will have a lengthy tour, starting in Salzburg and finishing on the French Riviera. There will be another guest performance in America, and that is plenty for me. In the meantime I will give concerts in Budapest, record Bach’s Kunst der Fuge for Philips, later there will be concerts with the Festival Orchestra, and I will finish the third Pilinszky record. Besides all this, i am also composing, which is becoming increasingly important to me. «Andor lintner PHOTO: MTI 61
