Magyar Hírek, 1984 (37. évfolyam, 2-26. szám)
1984-08-04 / 16-17. szám
JÁNOS FERENCSIK 1907-1984 fortunes of every Hungarian whether they live within the borders of Hungary or beyond them is our natural duty. In our opinion it is also natural that all Hungarians — wherever they live, wherever they may have gone — should be deeply interested in the welfare of the people of Hungary. Concern about the fortunes of his compatriots is an indivisible feature of all those who profess to be Hungarians on the basis of language, culture, knowledge, interests. This is not simply a right, but also a duty, which cannot harm the interests of others. The government of the Hungarian People’s Republic is doing its utmost to inform the people of the country about the work of Hungarians abroad, whether it concerns art, science, or material goods, and to further this also by inter-state agreements. We fervently desire that H ungarians beyond the borders should also be able to keep up with things in Hungary as they happen. It is important that they should know about our joys and our sorrows, for we not only want to share with them all these, but also need their sympathy and understanding. We know well the many reasons that motivated migration. It is no simple matter to remove oneself, sinking new tap roots in foreign soil. It is not easy even for those, who were fired by the desire for adventure, or enticed by the mirage of an easy life. Our sincere wish is that those who left Hungary should be loyal citizens of the countries that naturalised them, but they should not forget their Hungarian origin, their language or culture, since whatever they may have achieved they could thank in part at least to what- they learned at their mother’s knee, or from their teachers in Hungarian schools, their peers and their masters. They should earn respect to the Hungarian name with their achievements. One hundred thousand Hungarians visit Hungary year after year. Their aim is mostly to see their families, but kith and kin do not live in isolation. Those visiting the old country rejoice that our people happily prospers even when the going is tough. Attachment to the Hungarian life springs from many sources, and is fed to a considerable extent by the fact that even the remote corners of the country have been reconstructed in recent decades. Once an American Hungarian told me enthusiastically, that there was no more beautiful place in the world, than Rakamaz his home village. ft is heartening that more and more artists who live in the West appear at exhibitions, in concert halls, in the pages of journals of high repute. Our migrant compatriots actively prove with foundations they establish that the Hungarian spiritual community is inclusive and not excluding, and that every man of good will, to whom the fate of Hungarians is dear has a place in it. We hope they will also help the cause of the new National Theatre with their donations. The noble task of the World Federation of Hungarians is to nurse Hungarian culture abroad. Native language camps for children, scholarships all serve this noble purpose. To maintain all this, it is necessary to provide modern means, keeping in step with technical progress, the realities and requirements of the video era. As we have done in the past, we will in the future do all in our power to strengthen our relations with fellow Hungarians living beyond our borders, for this is the universal Hungarian interest.” MIKLÓS SZÁNTÓ We had known for a while that he was seriously ill. News about the state of his health were followed by the musical world, indeed by the whole of Hungarian society wit h as much concern as was paid only to outstanding personalities. Sometimes the reports from his sickroom raised hop««. We became more optimistic: although he cancelled his customary Villach appearance at the head of the State Concert Orchestra in the autumn, in January this year he undertook to conduct his orchestra in West Germany, as he had done every second year for a long time. He had to be brought home from there, however, after a few days, and since then his pain sometimes abated, sometimes increased until his final hour. The chief musical director of the State Opera House and the State Concert Orchestra deserved the respect ami love given to him not only by the Hungarian public, but by every music lover. No other Hungarian performer in the 20th century has done as much for the music of his country, or for the music education of his people as János Ferencsik. In this he was driven by the ardent love that bound him to this little land, which gave so many musicians to the world. When he was asked on his seventieth birthday whether his attachment to the country had been enriched with new experiences, Ferencsik said: “Yes, it has been, since I am bound with increasingly strong ties to more and more regions. 1 feel this enrichment when I read Petőfi, Arany, Berzsenyi, or Vörösmarty. After so many years this is only natural, and the reality that you must live and die here is even more true for me.” Hut this conductor, born on 18th January 1907, who learnt composing at the Budapest National Conservatory from László Lajtha, and organplaying from Viktor Sugár — his first source of income was also organplaying, still as a youth, at the Krisztina palish church in Buda — could have made a splendid career abroad after his first steps conducting at the Opera House. He was assistant to Toscanini in the early thirties at the Bayreuth Festive Plays, later guest conductor of the Vienna Staatsoper for two years, and then for a further one, but his ties to his country' were stronger than the promise of great success abroad. Since he joined the Opera House, recommended by Antal Fleischer in 1927, first as rópétiteur, then as conductor, he had conducted a whole range of the greatest and best known operas. Tt is almost impossible to list all of the works he took over from great, predecessors, which he presented anew. Last time, he wrote his name into the history of Hungarian music, still as chief musical director, by moving performances of Wagner’s Parsifal. His last performance at the Erkel Theatre was Parsifal on the 30th December 1983. Besides his work at the Opera House — focused just as his concert conducting — on Hungarian works by Erkel, Liszt, Bartók and Kodály — János Ferencsik also accepted a place on the concert platform. It is unlikely that any other Hungarian musician spent as much time with the same orchestra, as he did. He first conducted the Budapest Municipal Orchestra then made up mainly of amateur musicians a predecessor of the present State Concert Orchestra, in June 1932, and the other predecessor, the Budapest Concert Orchestra, recruited from the ranks of unemployed graduates of the Conservatorium, in November 1933, in the Great Concert- Hall of the Academy of Music. The programme of a concert he gave in 1935 in the Vigadó demonstrates the indissoluble bonds he had with Hungarian music even in his young years: Bartók’s Hungarian Peasant Songs, Bartók’s Rhapsody, Kodály’s Háry János Suite, and Dohnányi’s F sharp Suite with Lajos Hernádi as soloist. It is also remembered that he was the conductor of Bartók’s farewell concert at t he Academy of Music on 8th October 1940, and that he conducted Kodály’s Háry János - as well as his other works for orchestra and voices — many times in Hungary and abroad. Not long after the liberation of Budapest, he conducted Beethoven and Bartók works in the Erzsébetváros Club on the 10th and I 1th March 1945; and a week later at the then half-ruined Academy of Music Leo Weiner’s Bach transcription, and compositions by Mendelssohn, Goldmark, and Stravinsky in a concert of “forbidden works”. Since then he gave almost one thousand concerts at home and abroad with his orchestra. Besides the Opera House, his favourite ensemble was the State Concert Orchestra, to which he was appointed as chief musical director on the 19th of January 1952. He said in an interview : “We have achieved series which are no longer regarded as concerts but almost as family gatherings. My feeling is that in such occasions the orchestra and the conductor form a single community with the public: We are not giving a concert, but playing music to our friends.” Listing his opera performances, or his orchestral repertoir is a venture bordering on the impossible, as is detailing the multitude of his recordings. Ferenc Bónis had every reason to write after the concert Ferencsik gave at the Erkel Theatre on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday: “One of the most striking parts of the Ferencsik biography to be written one day will be the statistics of the diary of his work: the registration of his work as a performer, imposing in its dimensions, built up of single performances.” ISTVÁN GÁBOR 61
