Zoltán Kodály: Háry János-Suite, Summer Evening, Variations on a Hungarian Folk Song (The Peacock)

Album review

This disc is part of a delightful series of Hungarian releases revisiting some unusual Kodály works under the baton of veteran conductor Adam Fischer. Here he leads the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, whose brass section executes Kodály's comic lines without a hint of stress. There is one familiar repertory item here: the Háry János-Suite, a colorful, at times laugh-out-loud funny (if you dare) set of episodes from a picaresque comic opera. Fischer catches the work's slightly twisted marches (including "La Marseillaise") and effects like the Viennese Musical Clock (track 2) with understated effect. The other two works on the disc show the evolution of Kodály's folk-influenced language from late-Romantic intervallic flavoring to more structural conceptions. The rarity here is the symphonic poem Summer Evening, a student piece written in 1906 and revised in 1928 with a dedication to Arturo Toscanini. It's a calm piece of orchestral reverie with pentatonic melodies resounding in the night air. The Variations on a Hungarian Folk Song (The Peacock) are especially nicely explicated in the informative booklet notes by Anna Dalos (in Hungarian, French, and English). In this work Kodály brings together the motivic treatment of Beethoven's large set of Eroica Variations, Op. 35, whose external pattern Kodály follows closely (down to appearance of the bass line as the initual gesture), and his explorations of Hungarian folk music. It's not a simple work, and Fischer's slightly restrained reading is once again ideal even if some of its toughest brass passages do slip slightly out of control. The graphic design in this series is fresh, and the studio sound is clear and attractive. A good choice for anyone from serious Kodály fans to listeners whose ears have been caught by the Háry János-Suite.
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