Magyar Hírek, 1987 (40. évfolyam, 1-23. szám)
1987-06-27 / 13. szám
Hungarian musicians in the world The music of Liszt, Bartók, Kodály is the property of the whole world. Sándor Veress, the Kolozsvár-born composer who lives in Berne last February was celebrated internationally on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. His one-time pupil, György Ligeti, born in Dicsőszentmárton is resident in Hamburg, but his works are performed in the great concert halls of the world. Records made by Eugene Onnándy, György Széli, Ferenc Fricsay, Ernő Dohnányi, the Léner and the Magyar String Quartets, József Szigeti and Ede Zat hureczky are prized possessions of collectors of records. The more names are mentioned the more certain it is that some have been left out. This feeling that someone was left out only grows, when we try to enumerate the lesser-known names too besides those on whom the search-light of fame is trained. On such occasions a good music encyclopedia helps. Riemann’s, for instance. Let us start at the very beginning, with the letter A. The first Hungarian name is that of Pál Ábrahám. Composer of Hall at the Sai'oy, of Hose of Hawaii and many other operettas played around the world. The name of Ferenc Ákos, follows, a violinist, who lives in the United States, and is the founder of the Chicago string chamber orchestra. The others with names starting with A are: Gitta Alpár, the opera singer turned a star of o[)eretta; Géza Anda, the pianist, Piroska Anday who studied violin at the Budapest Academy of Music, but made her career on the operatic stage. István Anhalt, who now lives in Canada, learnt composition from Kodály, while Pál Arma the composer who lives in Paris was encouraged to collect folk-songs by Bartók himself. István Arató was born in Zagreb, then moved to Szeged to study and to obtain a doctor’s degree, later he became the director of the Conservatoire of Algiers and later assistant professor of music theory in Zurich. All in all thirteen Hungarian names under a single letter. 110 names I listened to the interviews of about two dozen artists. All of them talked to journalists on the Szülőföldünk programme in the past two years. There was only one of them, who spoke Hungarian with an accent, but she had every right to do so. Vivianne Gömöri, the pianist, reached France at the age of six months. Apart from the artists listed under A one finds about 110 names of Hungarians, who lived or are still living abroad, in the Riemann encyclopedia starting with the opera singer Sári Barabás right to the violinist Dénes Zsigmondi. The earliest name is that of Bálint Bakfark, the lutenist and composer, who died in Padua in 1576. The youngest of them, Róbert Wittinger the composer, who was bom in 1945 and has lived in the Federal Republic of Germany since the age of twenty. Kecskemét-born Emanuel Moor earned a place in the encyclopedia as the constructor of the two keyboard, five pedal instrument known as the Pleyel-Moór piano. After its debut in England, where the instrument was made, it was presented also in Budapest at a 1928 recital. It is questionable whether we could regard as Hungarian the pianist turned diplomat: Roberto Szidon, who was born in 1941 at Porto Allegrei We would hardly think of him as Hungarian on the basis of his name and personal data if the encyclopedia were not so definite about it. And yet another curiosity. The Uruguay embassy approached Veronika Vavrinecz, the head of the music department of the Budapest National Széchényi Library, requesting information about the Hungarian born Vincent Debali, composer of the national anthem of Uruguay. According to a Spanish encyclopedia he was born and educated in Hungary, then went to Montevideo via Italy, where he worked as a theatre director and the head of the President’s brass band. He composed the Anthem in 1845. Masters and Pupils Jenó Hubay was called home from Brussels in 1886 by Ágoston Trefort, the Minister of Education, to take over the violin department of the Academy of Music. Hubay, who was also director of the institution from the autumn of 1919 to 1934, soon established master classes that became a household world right through the world. One of his students was Jenő Ormándy, the conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra; he also taught violinists Stefi Geyer, József Szigeti, and Endre Gertler. The noted viola player, Ödön Partos also studied under Hubay. The composer Tibor Serly was taken to America by his father, Lajos Serly as a young child, but came home when he was twenty-one to enrol in the violin class of Hubay and the composer class of Kodály. Amongst Hubay’s pupils the name of Imre Waldbauer, one of the founders of the Waldbauer — Kerpelv String Quartet was prominent. Imre Waldbauer, became not only a great Conductor György Széli violinist, but also a professor of the Budapest Academy of Music. Ede Zathiu’eczky had a similar career: in the latter Hubay saw his own successor as the head of the violin department. There is yet another similarity in the life of the two Hubay pupils mentioned above; both of them died in the United States. Waldbauer moved there in 1946 and Zat hureczky in 1957. The pupils of Leó Weiner Leó Weiner’s former pupils came to Budapest two years ago from all corners of the world to celebrate the centenary of his birth. Weiner taught at the Academy of Music for almost half a century. He was appointed professor of music theory in 1908, but his work soon extended to teaching composition and also chamber music. He brought up generations of musicians before his retirement in 1957. One of his former pupils, János Starker, the celloist is professor at the University of Indiana. Many of Weiner’s pupils became also professors at various foreign universities: Ottó Gombosi, the noted student of music history teaches at Harvard, Paul Henry Lang, at Columbia University, and György Sebők, the pianist at the Bloomington University in Indiana. He also hokis master-courses in many places, including Budapest, Keszthely, and at the Szombathely Bartók Seminary. The family-tree of Hungarian pianists goes right back to Ferenc Liszt. István Thomán studied under Liszt, while Bartók and Ernő Dohnányi were Thomán’s pupils. When Thomán retired in 1907, Bartók was appointed as his successor; Dohnányi became director of the Academy fiist in 1919 then between 1994 anti 1943. György Cziffra studied under him at the Academy. Dorati, Kertész, Somogyi The will to help guided Antal Doráti, the world famous conductor last year, when — having been awarded with the Bartók-Pásztory prize — he divided it and established prizes in the memory of János Ferencsik and Mátyás Seiber to help the young conductors and composers first going abroad. István Kertész studied composition under Zoltán Kodály. He headed some of the best orchestras of the world: he was musical director of the Cologne opera house, then leading conductor of the London Symphonic Orchestra; unfortunately, in 1973, at the age of 44 he was drowned in the sea of Tel Aviv. László Somogyi, the conductor, who now lives in Switzerland, introduced Kertész to the world of conducting back at the Budapest Academy of Music. Somogyi, like almost every musician in this review also studied under Kodály. JUDIT CSERVENKA GREETINGS, TO JOHN HALAS According to the Who is Who he is 75 years old. This is almost unbelievable. Not only because he looks so young when he smiles or laughs, but also because he works as much (his friends say even more) as he did at the age of fifteen, when he first came into contact with films. John Halas made, directed or helped to bring about as producer at least 2,400 films. He has never tired of thinking up stories for cartoon films, drawing the figures and making them move. As the youngest of a family of seven children he began to draw the captions of advertising films for György Pál. A year in Paris followed and by the time he went to Sándor Bortnyik, the workshop of the Hungarian Bauhaus at the age of 19, as an assistant, he was already reckoned a veteran of cartoon films. Soon afterwards, as a twentyyear old he entered into partnership with Gyula Macskássy and Félix Kassovitz to make an advertising film for Nicotex cigarettes. When he was invited to England he was twenty-four. There he made a ten-minute cartoon in 1934 to the tune of Liszt’s Second Hungarian rhapsody. That was the first English colour film made using the Technicolor process. Six years later he established a cartoon film company with his wife, Joy Batchelor, which was named after the two of them: “Halas and Batchelor”. The innovative capacity of John Halas is without peer. He made the first stereo cartoon film in England, The Owl and the Kitten us he did the first British puppet film, the Statue on the Prow of the Ship. He has been using computer techniques in his cartoon films wherever possible in the last twenty years. Other people receive gifts on their birthday. He prefers to give gifts. He is about to establish a foundation to help young Hungarian draughtsmen, or students of cartoon films, to spend some time in Britain every year. Congratulations on your 75th birthday, .lohn Halas, and we all wish you good health and successful work! L. G. 31
