MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW Plain text for smartphones & printers

Support us financially by purchasing this from

Ferenc FARKAS (1905-2000)
Songs from Seven Decades

Andrea Meláth (mezzo soprano); Tünde Szabóki (soprano); István Dominkó (piano)
rec. June 2015, Hungaroton Studios, Budapest
No song lyrics in the booklet; downloadable from the Hungaroton website
HUNGAROTON HCD32770 [76:14]

The music of Ferenc Farkas has been increasingly well served by Toccata but Hungaroton has certainly not neglected one of Hungary’s leading composers. The Songs from Seven Decades are just that, given his long life, and span the years 1923-96. He set the vast majority of these songs in his native language but there are four settings in French, four in Latin, and one in English. You will need to pursue the lyrics from the Hungaroton website, as no texts or translations have been printed in the booklet. There are no paraphrases either. These may be tricky issues for Anglophones at whom this disc is, in any case directed, as the notes are presented first in English and then in Hungarian.

The music roves across the years in no chronological sequence. Thus we are introduced to the charming Five Troubadour Songs of 1947, French melodies with simple accompaniments, with Sándor Weöres’ Hungarian texts written after the music was set – an interesting way to go about things. An Esther Chain (1936) was written shortly after studies with Respighi in Rome and take in simplicity, relative stridency and a genial, rather folkloric element in the last song not unlike Bartók or Janáček’s settings of folk melodies.

Elements of earlier cosmopolitanism can be felt in the very early Three Songs of 1923-25 in which a lounge style can be felt at work. Dashing forward to The Sylph from 1996 and we find a drolly repetitious sequential figure. The programme has been constructed in such a way that deft, light-hearted settings – into which category I’d put A Turn from 1939 – contrast with more obviously colourful ones like Flame. He always responds well to the sixteenth-century lines of his favourite French poet, Louise Labé, whose Sonnet VII is here; he infuses it with some ‘early music’ cadences but not too many to render it pastiche.

Baudelaire’s Spleen is a flame around which many a musical moth has flickered. Farkas is no exception but his setting is one of the very best in this selection and indeed one of the best single settings of his that I’ve heard – albeit I’m not claiming exhaustive familiarity with the 400-odd of his song settings. Stylistically Farkas was a conservative drawing on a range of influences – troubadour, Biedermeier, folk. His sequences of settings, such as Flower Gardens and Old Cemetery are epigrammatic and compressed but the four existing Marian settings written between 1933 and 1976 have greater heft. These have a quietly glowing expressive feel, however reserved, that sustain and impress.

The songs are shared between mezzo Andrea Meláth and soprano Tünde Szabóki. Both are characterful singers and clearly attuned to Farkas’ attractively shaped settings. Meláth bears the greater burden but Szabóki gets the all-important Rosarium, those Marian pieces. Pianist István Dominkó is a tower of strength bringing to life the supportive tissue of Farkas’ writing with sympathy and discretion.

The booklet notes are crisply done (but note again the absence of texts) whilst the recording is perfectly fine, neither too cool nor too resonant.

Jonathan Woolf

Disc contents
Öt francia trubadúr dallam/Five troubadour songs (1947) [5:02]
Eszterlánc/An Esther chain (1936) [6:15]
Három dal/Three songs (1923-25) [4:47]
Mély esti csendben/In the deep evening silence (1928) [2:16]
The Sylph (1996) [1:10]
Gyöngy/A pearl (1939) [1:32]
Fordulat/A turn (1939) [1:46]
Láng/Flame (1941) [1:24]
Sonnet VII de Louise Labé (1944) [3:03]
Nyárvégi csillagok/Stars at the end of summer (1940) [3:12]
Milyen?/What is it like? (1996) [0:50]
For Isabelle (1996) [0:45]
Spleen (1997) [1:28]
Két dal Kisfaludy Sándor verseire/Two songs to poems by Sándor Kisfaludy (1957) [5:38] Schumann módjára/In the manner of Schumann [1:46]
Két pad/Two Benches [4:48]
Songs from the "Twelfth night" by Shakespeare: No. 3 Come away (1954) [2:06]
Virágoskert/Flower garden (1989-90) [9:45]
Régi temet/ Old cemetery (1995) [4:07]
Rosarium (1933-76) [8:47]
Három dal Shakespeare "Ahogy tetszik" cím vígjátékából/Three songs from the comedy "As you like it" by Shakespeare (1937) [5:28]

 

 



Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing