Last year I welcomed a Naxos CD of the orchestral
music of Eugene Zádor from the same performers (
review).
While I recognised that the composer’s lack of sheer melodic memorable
qualities was a problem I suggested that further exploration of his
output would be welcome. At the time I wrote that review this second
instalment was already in the can, and I am delighted to make the acquaintance
again of a composer whose neglect since his death has been almost total.
In my earlier review I suggested that the music that Zádor wrote
in Europe before his departure for exile in America, which was espoused
by conductors such as Furtwängler and Weingartner, had more sheer
profile than his later works written during and after his spell in Hollywood
working as an orchestrator for fellow-exiles such as Miklós Rózsa.
I suggested that exploration of his earlier music might prove a fruitful
field. In the event what we have here is a collection of music entirely
written in America, but the profile of these works demonstrates that
the composer’s inspiration - which I had suggested might have
been sapped by exile - did remain with him even in his later music.
In particular the
Elegie and Dance - to employ the odd combination
of French and English spelling used on this disc and presumably by the
composer himself - is a piece which is more impressive than any of the
music from his American period we heard on the earlier CD. Think of
a Debussian
Faune seen in the clear light of early morning rather
than the impressionist haze of a summer midday, and you will get some
idea of the style of the
Elegie. The following
Dance is
more reminiscent of Bax in works such as
The Happy Forest or
the
Dance of Wild Irravel. So the music is not precisely of mind-blowing
originality, but so what? It has an immediately attractive style, and
the melodic profile is considerably higher than in most of the works
on the earlier CD.
Both the
Oboe Concerto and the
Divertimento employ an
orchestra consisting of strings only, and the parallels I suggested
in my earlier review to the later American music of Bloch are clear
here also. Again the
Oboe Concerto has also a distinctly English
melodic cut, with overtones not only of Vaughan Williams in
his
concerto, but also of Finzi in the
Clarinet Concerto. Hadady
performs it well, with a nicely fruity tone, and makes the most of the
rather unexpected closing moments. The
Divertimento has a jolly
bounce in the outer movements to counterbalance a romantic warmth in
the central
Andantino. We are told in the booklet notes that
the latter is “the composer’s most-performed piece”,
but that is really saying rather little and the work has never previously
appeared on a recording. It is strange that music of such immediate
approachability as this should have totally disappeared since the composer’s
death.
The
Studies for Orchestra have however previously appeared on
CD. Indeed it is the only recording of Zádor’s music in
the current catalogue to have been issued before the first Naxos CD
last year. That earlier reading was given by the Westphalian Symphony
Orchestra under Paul Freeman as the filler to a 1975 recording of the
suite from Zádor’s opera
Christopher Columbus on
Cambria CD-1100
. I mentioned this earlier disc in my previous
review, where I commented unfavourably on the performance of the operatic
suite - with a most peculiar narration delivered unidiomatically by
John Barrymore - and complained in particular of the very dry recorded
sound. The performance and recording here are a considerable improvement
on that 1975 reading, and indeed make the work - a collection of eight
movements exploring extremes of orchestral colour - sound much more
impressive than before.
Mind you, the composer rather overstated his case when he observed:
“A flute has a high C, and nobody ever uses it, and a contrabassoon
has a low B flat, and nobody ever uses it; but I used them, because
if they weren’t useable, they wouldn’t be there.”
Well, neither of those statements is literally true. Composers have
regularly used the flute not only up to C but also to the D above it
- see Prokofiev’s
Classical Symphony, for example - and
have also regularly employed the lowest notes of the double bassoon
which indeed have the distinction of being the lowest notes available
in the orchestra, below any notes obtainable from the tuba or the double
basses. Never mind, it is a pardonable exaggeration. Unfortunately however
the
Studies are not only the longest work on this CD, but they
are also the least interesting. The decided lack of melodic profile
in the music which I noted last year rears its head again here.
I complained in my earlier review about the very dry acoustic of the
broadcasting studio that was used for these recordings, and little has
be done to improve the sound here. However I also complained about the
internal balance of the orchestra, and in particular the backward sound
of the strings. Here things are now considerably better. Two of the
works employ string orchestra only, and although one could imagine,
to advantage, a larger body of players particularly in the
Divertimento,
where there are places where the score seems to demand a richer sound,
the internal balance is clean and precise. In the
Elegie and Dance
the woodwind players, particularly the flute in the
Elegie, could
have been placed at a greater distance to our benefit, giving the music
a more romantically resonant sound. The horns - the only brass employed
- do sound very far forward indeed. That said, the
Dance sparkles
and the violins are now nicely present in the audio spectrum. Indeed,
all round both the performances and recording here are better than on
the earlier Naxos CD, and whet one’s appetite to hear more music
by this composer. There is apparently a great deal of it which awaits
exploration.
The orchestra is sponsored by the Hungarian Railways; hence the MÁV
suffix. This presumably explains the rather odd CD cover with its picture
of a child in Hungarian peasant costume waiting on a railway platform,
which otherwise would appear to have nothing to do with the works on
this CD all of which were written in America. The earlier CD contained
two earlier pieces by Zádor which had decidedly Hungarian overtones.
I would hope that future issues in this valuable series of recordings
would allow us to hear more of the music written before his departure
for exile. It also might be an improvement if later issues - can we
hope for more? - could be recorded in a more resonant acoustic.
If you missed the earlier Naxos CD, I would recommend that you explore
that disc in addition to the current instalment. You will be rewarded
by music that is instantly approachable and, to use an old cliché,
does not deserve the neglect which it has suffered. Give Zádor
a chance.
Paul Corfield Godfrey 
