Ferenc Kiss (violin/concertmaster)
Portrait
rec. 1953-2009
BELLA MUSICA BM312473 [79]
Ferenc Kiss was born in Budapest in 1943. His first teacher was his father, also called Ferenc, who was leader of the Hungarian Radio Orchestra and examples of whose playing can be heard as bonus tracks. The young Kiss moved on to the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, a powerhouse institution, and further studies in Germany with Sándor Végh. At 20 he was appointed concertmaster of Philharmonia Hungarica and has been guest leader and soloist with numerous German orchestras since. Bella Musica has shown admirable dedication to Kiss, having released numerous discs devoted to his concerto work and to the chamber repertoire; Kiss is a member of the Budapest Trio.
For this Portrait, Kiss seems to have had a strong say in what’s been included. He has selected quite widely and fuses a standard concerto with film music and a modern solo violin sonata, and other works, to present a look at the artist in the round. They all seem to be broadcast performances.
John Buckley’s 16-minute Sonata was composed in 1983 and performed by Kiss in Munich in March 1987. It’s single-tracked but clearly divides into four movements, possibly taking Bartók as an initial reference point but going on to encode some lyrical writing in the second movement Scherzo and encoding a warmly mythic quality in the slow movement. The finale approaches crisis point, but slowly subsides to a reflective, accepting conclusion. There are two pieces by Mozart. The Fifth Concerto is given with the Wiener Tonkünstler directed by William Wilsen in 1983. The horns certainly pop and the rapport between soloist and orchestra is fine, Kiss playing with elegance, refinement and tonal purity. The finale is deft and not overdone though orchestrally things are under characterised. The Adagio, K261 finds Kiss directing the Orchestra Sinfonica di Bolzano e Trento, and sensitively shaping the solo line.
He also plays the theme from Schindler’s List with rapt devotion, dusts down Svendsen’s evergreen Romance which is played with both touching intimacy and also gleaming romantic expression. Walter Jurmann wrote the film music for Tränen in der Geige in 1932-33 and the solo is a lilting romance, cast in an Old School manner. It’s played with requisite generosity.
The two bonus tracks feature Kiss’s father in two Radio Budapest performances given in 1953 with his accompanist László Turán. Boris Saveljev was very young to have written so charming a waltz – he was born in 1934 so that makes him 19 at most when it was recorded. Whereas the Moszkowski-Sarasate Guitarre receives a splendidly authoritative performance, strongly nuanced.
Selected from a rich variety of locations and orchestras in performances dating from 1983 to 2009 (the Williams), Kiss’s performances bear out the admiration of Christoph Eschenbach, whose testimonials for the violinist are reprinted in the booklet, attesting to his qualities as his concertmaster. Though Kiss has long been associated with Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, there are also recordings of concertos by Fritz Leitemeyer and Dieter Acker that should be well worth seeking out.
Jonathan Woolf
Contents
John Buckley (b.1951)
Sonata for unaccompanied violin (1983)
rec. 8 March 1987, Munich
John Williams (b.1932)
Schindler’s List; solo
L’Orchestre Symphoniques du Collčge Rameau de Versailles/Christophe Junivart
rec. 28 January 2009, Versailles
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Violin Concerto No.5 in a major, K219 ‘Turkish’
Wiener Tonkünstler/William Wilsen
rec. 8 October 1983, Musikvereinsaal, Vienna
Adagio in E major, K261
Orchestra Sinfonica di Bolzano e Trento/Ferenc Kiss
rec. 10 October 1987
Johan Svendsen (1840-1911)
Romance in G major, Op.26
Frankfurt Radio Orchestra/Jan Stulen
rec. 28 October 1991, Frankfurt
Walter Jurmann (1903-1991)
Tränen in der Geige; violin solo from the film (1932-33)
Cologne Radio Orchestra/Klaus Arp
rec. 29 May 1996, Cologne
Bonus tracks by Ferenc Kiss, Senior (violin)
Boris Saveljev (1934-1991)
Valse (1953)
Moritz Moszkowski (1854-1925) – Pablo de Sarasate (1844-1908)
Guitarre, Op.45 No.2
László Turán (piano)
rec. 1953, Hungarian Radio, Budapest
