Ferenc Farkas: Orchestral Music, Volume Six
Ferenc Farkas (1905–2000) is often viewed as a gifted miniaturist, sifting through Baroque and popular Hungarian sources to produce glittering orchestral dances of infectious energy. That Farkas does indeed exist, as in the suite from the ballet The Sly Students, but this album also shows an entirely different side to his musical personality. His Preludio e Fuga finds him experimenting with dodecaphony – but he offered a caution: ‘In the twelve-tone theme of the fugue, I did not use Schoenberg’s orthodox model but a softer form, more euphoric, with a rounder and more attractive sonority – I am thinking of works by Luigi Dallapiccola or […] Frank Martin’. His only symphony was a victim of Communist orthodoxy, so severely criticised at Party meetings that Farkas shelved the score. This first complete recording reveals a work that is both big-boned and big-hearted – one of the finest of all Hungarian symphonies.
MÁV Symphony Orchestra
Gábor Takács-Nagy, conductor
Listen To This Recording:
The Sly Students Suite (1949)** (20:25)
- I. Fair in Debrecen (4:10)
- II. Air de danse (2:27)
- III. Students’ Dance (4:22)
- IV. Gypsy Music (1:30)
- V. Pas de deux (3:15)
- VI. Finale (4:41)
Symphony (1952)* (35:04)
- I. Moderato – Allegro agitato (10:34)
- II. Elegia (10:04)
- III. Scherzo (6:06)
- IV. Finale (8:20)
Preludio e fuga (1944-47)** (9:11)
- Preludio (3:25)
- Fuga (5:46)
*First Recording
**First Digital Recording
The Ultimate Classical Music Guide :
‘These are interesting pieces. They really are. […]
[The symphony] is a very, very fine work. […] It has some very cool sounds in it. It exploits the full range of the symphony orchestra. […] The melodic material is memorable. It’s well-proportioned. […] It’s really a fine work and definitely worth investigating. […]
The disc opens with a lovely ballet suite, The Sly Students Suite. […] Oh they’re delicious, they really are. […] It’s charming, it’s just full of charm. It’s colourfully scored. […] the Pas de deux is beautiful really, really lovely. It’s passionate and I guess romantic, but somehow There’s a certain reserve or clear-headedness to it that keeps it from to sound like another Tchaikovsky knockoff, it really doesn’t. There’s real talent here. […]
The symphony is definitely worth hearing.’
—David Hurwitz, The Ultimate Classical Music Guide