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Sándor BALASSA (b. 1935) Journeys in Bihar County, op.93 (2005) [24:56] Civis Town of Debrecen, op.91 (2005) [21:25] Praise of Knightly Virtues, op.100 (2007) [27:32]
MR (Hungarian
Radio) Symphony Orchestra/Adam Medveczky
rec. 28 February 2008, Studio 6, Hungarian Radio. DDD HUNGAROTON
CLASSIC HCD32585 [74:14]
I have known the name of Sándor Balassa for
many years but I have never, knowingly, heard a note of his
music. Until now. This isn't because there haven't been
any recordings of his music for there have been many. It's
probably because he isn't played or broadcast all that
much in the UK. These three pieces – two suites and a tone
poem – are all very recent and, I assume, are typical of
Balassa's style. The Journeys in Bihar County is
a reminiscence of the area where the composer lived as
a boy. Balassa has written, "All I had to do was to
revive the experiences of my youth, to look for nice and
genuine sounds suitable for evoking the call of the native
land in the listener as well." Consequently we have
a pleasant four movement suite, colourful and unpretentious.
Civis Town of Debrecen was written to commemorate the day the town was
created. In one large movement, subdivided into several
contrasting sections, the composer has written, "The
piece does not intend to annoy, to scare away the listener
but rather wishes to draw him into the sensation of an
emotionally familiar and common tone letting through the
folksong-like intonation and the sound of the Hungarian
soul." It is a colourful and unpretentious piece.
Praise of Knightly Virtues is a five movement suite based on the most naďve
of concepts – "the work is an imaginary experiment
to set right the 'time out of joint'" and "I
was looking for a simple, sincere tone in the naive belief
that there would still be listeners in this corrupted world
who believe in the natural order of things." It is
a colourful and unpretentious piece.
You may already have worked out why I have described
each work with exactly the same words. If you haven't let
me tell you that although all three works are quite attractive,
and they don't get in the way of whatever is going through
your mind as you listen to them, they simply fail to deliver
any really satisfactory experience, musical or otherwise.
For instance, the final movement of Journeys in Bihar
County is supposed to represent a fair but it is far
too four-square and well planned for anything so exciting
and chaotic. The knightly virtues of the final piece are
equally leaden-footed and uninspired. And that is the real
problem – this music is uninspired; well crafted, to be
sure, but with no heart, no sense of what it is supposed
to be portraying, all the three pieces could exist under
totally different titles and it would still be the same
music saying little.
Balassa makes mention of the Hungarian qualities
of this music but there's much more Magyar feel to the
music of Bartók, Kodály, Dohnányi and Ligeti than you'll
find here. I would love to be able to welcome this disk
for the music is tuneful and colourful (there I go again),
well orchestrated and pleasant but that's simply not enough
to make a musical work stand repeated hearings. One demands
more than this from a composition – nice isn't enough.
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