Calum Macdonald makes clear in his liner-note that Weiner was
very much part of a Hungarian quadrumvirate alongside Bartok,
Kodaly and Dohnanyi. His reputation however travelled less easily
than those of his confreres. His musical production of some fifty
works tailed off after the mid-1920s as his teaching duties took
a hold. Among some fifty works there are three string quartets,
a string trio, some violin concertos, a concertino for piano
and orchestra and a romance for cello, harp and strings. His
numerous pupils included Anda, Dorati, Katsaris, Kentner, Rózsa,
Solti, Starker, Varga, Vasary and Vegh.
The 1911 First Sonata is constantly in romantic song caught between
Brahms and early Richard Strauss. The last movement is exuberant
and trips over its own shoelaces in its zest and attack. The
four movement Second Sonata is from 1918 written just after his
highly successful incidental music for
Csongor es Tunde.
The music is more tangily Hungarian but still rooted deeply in
Brahmsian romanticism. In its orchestral guise this Sonata is
the Second Violin Concerto of 1957. This is passionate music
in the same sense as the Korngold chamber music and the Delius
violin sonatas. The finale brings Weiner as close as he ever
got to Kodály. At other moments we think of the heady
Delius and at others still of the contemporaneous Dunhill Second
Sonata. The
Pereg Recruiting Dance mixes military determination
with cafe swooning. The
Lakodalmos similarly picks up
on ikonic Hungarian zigeuner styles. The
Three Hungarian Folk
Dances and the
Twenty Easy Little Pieces are in similarly
pointed vein.
Let's hear more Weiner especially the violin concertos, the
Csongor
es Tunder suites and the three string quartets.
Weiner seems always to have been more Dohnanyi than Kodály.
Certainly his style was never anywhere near Bartók. His
was the Hungarian gypsy style carried over from the nineteenth
century into the twentieth.
Rob Barnett
Hagai Shaham (violin), Arnon Erez
(piano) 
