May 13, 2019

  • Hungarian Narrative Symphonic Poem Writ Large

     

    Weiner: Toldi

    Budapest Symphony Orchestra MAV/Valeria Csanyi
    Naxos 8.573847
    Total Time:  64:49
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    Naxos returns to explore some of Hungary’s 20th-Century symphonic music with this new release of a work by Leo Weiner (1885-1960).  He was an important music educator who taught throughout his life with some of his most famous students being Antal Dorati, Fritz Reiner, Georg Solti, and Janos Starker.  For the most part, his style continued the post-Brahms romanticism inherited from the 19th Century, inherited from his own teacher Hans von Koessler.  Later work features occasional forays into folk music thus making his music belong to the more conservative pieces of the period.

    Toldi is one of the great pieces of mid-19th Century Hungarian literature.  It was written in 1847 by the poet Janos Arany.  Weiner’s work was created in the midst of the Stalinist Rakosi regime (1948-1953), though it is doubtful that he intended any sort of political statement.  It does connect though with his own sense of national pride.  The piece is a rather massive undertaking in twelve musical tone poems, making it closer to Smetana’s Ma Vlast, and yet Weiner appears to have first considered this magnum opus as a symphony but soon changed that designation to “symphonic poem”.   In that respect, one can perhaps see a closer kinship to the work of Liszt and here each of the cantos of Arany’s poem are easily seen to connect to each movement of the work.  The form of the music itself follows the text more closely than one might expect and therein lies the best way to enter into the work.  There are some slight modernist tendencies in the piece making it lean a bit more toward a Neo-Classical quality.  This is aided by some of the interesting rhythmic ideas.  The music has a more dramatic narrative quality which is likely to connect better today with audiences used to film scores and their visual connections and sometimes the music is like a blend of Rozsa and Kodaly.  For this release, there are essentially summaries of the poem originally provided by the composer.  It is fairly easy to see how the music follows these narratives and it is in the dance-like moments where the work tends to shine.  One of these is the delightful “Merrymaking” of the second movement, another is the tenth movement's csardabas which is really the work's real highlight.  The latter is along the lines of the Brahms' Hungarian Dances.  When a bit more chromaticism appears, the music garners a bit more interest apart from its often more moody brooding.  The orchestration is fairly conventional, though there are a number of great moments for winds and brass to shine a bit.

    The recording was made in the week prior to the Budapest Symphony’s successful concert performance which included projected text of Arany’s work so audiences could better connect the music.  For many listeners, it will be more a descriptive musical journey that will provide gradual revelations as the story also becomes familiar.  The sound of the recording is a little on the heavier side but still quite vivid.  The orchestra really latches on well to the music and Csanyi manages to help make the necessary shifts in tempo work well to connect to the story.  Toldi certainly will be intriguing to those exploring 20th Century symphonic music.