Kodaly, Z.: Choral Music

Album review

Zoltán Kodály is best known outside Hungary as a composer of splashy orchestral works such as the Háry Janós Suite, the Dances of Marosszék, and as Béla Bartók's friend. In Hungary, though, Kodály is a national musical titan, both as her greatest ethnomusicologist and the man under whose name some 250 singing schools were established throughout Hungary, utilizing his special method of hand signals to indicate pitch. Not surprisingly, Kodály was a prolific composer of choral music, and the former Hungarian state label, Hungaraton, is in the process of recording all of his works of this kind. Kodály: Works for Mixed Choir, Vol. 3, represents the third entry in the series for mixed chorus, a grab bag of pieces dating from the end of World War II to the last work Kodály published in his lifetime, the masterwork Mohács (1965). The Debrecen Kodály Chorus, founded by György Gulyás in 1955 and regarded as one of Hungary's finest professional choirs, performs this selection of 15 works led by Istvan Párkai. The piece that has the oldest pedigree here is Kodály's setting of the Stabat Mater, finished in 1961 but begun in 1898, not 1892 as stated on the back cover. The overall program has an amazing range and an international focus; to observe the centenary of the French Revolution of 1848 Kodály composed a joyous and transparent setting of "La Marseillaise," and there are Hungarian-language settings of texts drawn from William Shakespeare, John Masefield, and the Old Testament. There is a surprising amount of sacred settings for this era, notable in that relentlessly anti-clerical Soviet government forces then dominated Hungary; in Hungarian patriotic pieces, arguably the most effective in the collection, there is a general devotional tone that smacks of the sacred choral tradition. Just how Kodály's activity in this vein escaped the notice of Moscow is not disclosed in the notes, but it is unmistakable. Moreover, Kodály's popularity was not just limited to Hungary, but his choral music was known in all Soviet bloc countries. The Masefield setting, "I will go look for death," is a harrowing, harmonically daring piece that demonstrates Kodály did not abandon modernism in the face of communism. "An Ode for Music" -- not to mention several other pieces -- points up Kodály as a progenitor and probable inspirer of the High Holy Minimalist style that sprouted up among former Soviet bloc composers in the waning days of the Soviet regime. Recorded at the Déry Museum in Debrecen, the recording is a little dry but very clear, and the choral singing is excellent; soloist Zoltán Bátki Fazekas does a fine job in the demanding solo part in the long cantata "Hymn of Zrínyi." To anyone interested in knowing more about Kodály's choral music, his quiet defiance to the powers that were, and his enormous impact on ex-Soviet bloc music, Hungaroton's Kodály: Works for Mixed Choir, Vol. 3, should prove entirely satisfactory.
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