THE ONLY STEREO PERFORMANCES OF THE CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA

AND MAROSSZEK DANCES AVAILABLE

STEREO "360 SOUND"

COLUMBIA

CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA MAROSSZEK DANCES

6ALANTA DANCES

Produced by Thomas Frost

ORMANDY CONDUCTS KODALY

THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA

Side 1

CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA (i8:ss) Side 2

DANCES OF GALANTA fisur) DANCES OF MAROSSZEK (u:26) The selections are ASCAP.

Engineering: Edward T. Graham and John Guerriere

IN MEMORIAM-Zoltan Kodaly

Born in Kecskemet, Hungary, December 16, 1882 Died in Budapest, Hungary, March 6, 1967

My first encounter with Zoltan Kodaly took place when

I was ten years old and had just become a pupil of Jeno

Hubay at the Academy of Music in Budapest. Kodaly

was Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the

Academy, and he impressed us as being a very serious

and very critical man who never for a moment relaxed his

authority. I remember once when he asked us to submit

compositions so that he could evaluate our progress, he

looked at my composition, turned it upside down and

asked. What is this?" I replied, "This is a modem com¬

position." Without looking at me, he handed my paper

back to me and said, "First, go home and learn about the

triad then come back." Being the youngest student in

the class, I felt that he was picking on me, and it wasn't

until years later that I realized how right he had been.

Kodaly always tried to teach us as individuals. He never

tried to force us to compose his way but rather tried to

correct our mistakes and give us freedom of expression.

My studies in composition were part of my over-all music

education and were not taken with a view to my becoming

a composer. When I became a conductor, I realized that I

would only be an imitative composer because of conduct¬

ing so many creations by other composers, so I gave it up entirely.

Kodaly often called our attention to the great wealth of

folk music in Hungary and Rumania, and he repeatedly

advised us to go out into the countryside and listen to

the peasants singing the songs that had been handed

down to them through generations. He, himself, with

Bela Bartok, spent many months among the peasants,

making notes of everything he heard. He collected hun¬

dreds of folk tunes so did Bartok—and these tunes can

be heard in his music. The music of Kodaly and Bartok is

Stereo MS 7034 Mono ML 6434

COLUMBIA

SDBBB&SflZDS

greatly dissimilar but their basic musical ideas were in¬

spired by the same thing—the songs of the people.

Politically, Kodaly was a liberal, and although he never

became directly involved in political affairs, he was ap¬

pointed Minister of Education after the first Hungarian

revolution, in 1918. He remained a liberal throughout his

life, and the political groups that took over Hungary after

the 1918 revolution respected him for what he was and did not try to influence him.

When Kodaly visited this country with his first wife,

Emma, in November 1946, he was my guest in Philadel¬

phia and I invited him to conduct the first American per¬

formance of his "Peacock Variations." When he walked

onto the stage, the orchestra rose to its feet as a gesture

of respect for this great man. I was proud then to have my

master as my guest conductor in Philadelphia.

This recording was originally planned for release on

Kodaly's eighty-fifth birthday, December 16, 1967. Un¬

fortunately, he did not live to be so honored. Therefore,

this recording must become an "in memoriam" tribute to the great master, Zoltan Kodaly.

Eugene Ormandy

ancient Hungarian folk melodies and dance rhythms.

Kodaly biographer Percy Young has written that Kodaly's

use of folk materials in this work occurs "unconsciously

rather than consciously—as, for instance, in the Concerto,

where the opening seems directly to spring from a Trans-

danubian shepherd's pipe tune."

Kodaly's Marosszek Dances also derive from folk mate¬

rials. Conceived in 1923, the work did not take final shape

until 1927, when Kodaly completed a piano version. Three

years later, he arranged it for orchestra. Kodaly cited his

source materials in an introduction to the printed score:

"It is perhaps no accident that most of the old folk-dance

music has been preserved in the district of Marosszek in

Transylvania and that some dances are even called Maros-

szeki in other regions. . . . Until the war, one could hear

these pieces in every village, played either on a violin or

a shepherd's flute, and old people used to sing them. ...

Brahms's famous Hungarian Dances are an expression of

urban Hungary around the year 1860. ... My Marosszek

Dances have their roots in a much more remote past."

Like the Marosszek Dances, the Galanta Dances hark

back in time. About 1800," Kodaly wrote in the preface

to the score, "some books of Hungarian dances were pub¬

lished in Vienna, and one contained music 'after several

gypsies from Galanta'.. . . The composer has taken his

principal subjects from these ancient sources."

In an article published in 1921, Bela Bartok wrote that

Kodaly's work up to that time had ". . . no connection

with atonal, bitonal or polytonal types of music. The guid¬

ing principle of his work is still balanced tonality. Yet, his

musical language is entirely new and expresses musical

ideas never heard before, thus proving that tonality is still

a legitimate principle of composition."

Bartok himself brought the score of his friend's Concerto

for Orchestra to the United States in 1940, at the begin-

ning of World War II. The work had been commissioned

by the Chicago Philharmonic Society to celebrate its dia¬

mond jubilee, and Kodaly had begun work on it in 1939. The Concerto received its first performance on February

6, 1941, by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the

direction of Frederick Stock, and the composer conducted

the first European performance exactly two years later, on February 6,1943, in Budapest.

The Concerto for Orchestra takes its inspiration from the

concerto grosso of the Baroque period and is flavored with

Galanta is a village in northwestern Hungary where

Kodaly spent seven happy childhood years. The Galanta

Dances were written in 1933, on a commission from the

Budapest Philharmonic Society to mark its eightieth anniversary.

In 1935, the Galanta and Marosszek Dances were com¬

bined to form the score for an unsuccessful ballet pro¬

duced by the Budapest Opera. However, subsequent

dance works utilizing these two scores were produced

successfully in a number of cities throughout Germany.

Library of Congress catalog card number R67-3446 applies to ML 6434/R67-3447 applies to MS 7034.

Other albums by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra:

Stravinsky: Petrushka (Original Version); Kodaly: Hary Janos

Suite .ML 6146/MS 6746* *

Prokofiev: Symphony No. 6, Op. Ill; Hindemith: Symphony Ma¬ this der Maler; Symphonic Metamorphoses . .ML 5962/ML 6562*

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4, Op. 43.ML 5859/MS 6459*

*Stereo

5

Cover photo: Columbia Records Photo Studio—Sandy Speiser,/Manufactured by Columbia Records/CBS, Inc./ 51 w. 52 Street, New York, N.Y./® "Columbia," g "Masterworks," Marcas Reg. Printed in U.S.A.

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