I am certainly pleasantly surprised by the qualities of the Buffalo Philharmonic, in the state of New York, under its chief conductor JoAnn Falletta (Queens, New York, 1974) in the orchestral works of Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967).
Falletta, with her appointment from the 1999-2000 concert season, was the first woman to head an American orchestra. She subsequently built a great reputation with the Buffalo Philharmonic in the same America, which has resulted in a contract that (for now?) runs through the end of the 2025-2026 concert season. If she completes the entire term, she will have been associated with this orchestra for well over a quarter century.
More than in passing, she also leads as 'artistic director' in Honolulu the only symphony orchestra that Hawaii has. Beyond that, she has still had much to contribute musically in Europe. In short, the name Falletta may not be on everyone's lips, but she is known and loved nonetheless. And she possesses great musical qualities equally: in this regard, she is certainly not inferior to any other luminary: Marin Alsop.
After listening to this Naxos album, I found another release on Spotify from this label, also entirely devoted to the music of Zoltán Kodály, by the same orchestra under the same conductor, with the Concert for orchestra, the Dances of Galánta and of Marosszék, and the Peacock variations. The overall listening impressions were equally positive on this occasion as well.
As far as I'm concerned, there is no doubt whatsoever: a Central European orchestra with a conductor from the same region does not really do this any better, though undoubtedly differently; and fortunately so, for in the end no one wants a tedious affair through much of the same.
What stands out so strikingly in all these performances is the inseparable bond between Kodály the composer and Kodály the ethnographer. Kodály who, together with his good friend Béla Bartók, traveled throughout Hungary diligently collecting and documenting folk music, and who, like Bartók (whose ethnographic expeditions even extended deep into the Balkans), gave folklore a warm place in his compositional oeuvre.
But unlike Bartók, Kodály chose the conservative path for the integration of folk music into his own work, while Bartók used folklore only as base material. With the result that melodic, harmonic and rhythmic constitution in Kodály's work carries a far less progressive character; and not necessarily because Kodály restricted himself exclusively to the folk music of his homeland. Just as it explains why—unlike Bartók—melody remained the dominant factor in Kodály's composing, he focused explicitly on it and subordinated rhythm and harmony to it. Which certainly does not mean that everything has been said, for as a composer he also experienced influences from Gregorian chant, Renaissance church music (particularly that of Palestrina), but also from Bach and even French impressionism. It is certainly not an amalgam, nor is Kodály's strictly personal musical signature absent from his music. Kodály too could certainly look beyond his own horizon.
The three-part Symphony in (the resplendent) C major represented in this second release, intended as a musical in memoriam for the Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini, begun already in the thirties but only completed in 1957, shortly after the maestro's death, is besides Summer Evening—a work filled with dance and dream—a representative example of the conservative Kodály. A striking detail: in 1906, the year Summer Evening was completed, Bartók and Kodály (they remained friends for life) published a book, Magyar Nepdalok, entirely devoted to Hungarian folk music and inspired by what they considered their ideal: a reborn Hungarian people in a renewed Hungary.
Considerably more engaging is the Háry János Suite (1926/27), undoubtedly Kodály's best-known work, derived from his eponymous folk opera, which as a comic 'Singspiel' premiered in 1926 in the Hungarian capital. Strongly Hungarian-oriented by nature (the language of performance is of course Hungarian), humor included, the piece proved rather 'difficult' outside its own borders, which Kodály thought to solve with the six parts packaged as a suite (four 'adventures', with prologue and epilogue), of which the first performance took place in Barcelona on 24 March 1927, by the Orquestra Pau Casals.
Kodály himself briefly summarized the content of the opera:
'Every Hungarian is a dreamer. He escapes the sad reality of the centuries and immerses himself in a world of illusion. Háry János' boasting is more than a dream, it is also poetry … [He] is a primitive poet, and what he has to say is concentrated in one hero: himself. After we have listened to the deeds he has invented, it is tragically symbolic that we meet him in a poor village café. He seems happy in his poverty—a king in the kingdom of his dreams.'
This second Kodály album is also a bull's-eye, for these are performances to marvel at and the recording is excellent. Perhaps there will be more Naxos releases from Buffalo forthcoming, though this will undoubtedly be limited to works for (soloists), choir and orchestra, for to my knowledge Kodály has not produced more orchestral works. Although there is still a Theater Overture (1931) extant.