Muzsikás with Marta Sebestyen / Live At Liszt Academy / cdRoots

Joined by Alexander Balanescu, cellist Roel Dieltiens, pianist Jeno Jando, the Keller Quartet and the Girls' Choir Pro Musica, this seminal Hungarian folk group explores the connections between folk and classical music in the grand tradition of Kodaly and Bartok in their release of this live recording from 2003.

The ensemble says of this recording released in 2004:
"Most of us began our music training with the Kodaly method. From that time on, music has been a significant part of our lives. It has been our dream to convey what it is, that traditional folk music, Kodaly and Bartok's music means to us. So, starting in 1999, we gave a concert each spring at the Academy of Music in Budapest presenting another side of Kodaly and Bartok's work.

"Performing also at these concerts as our guests were violinist Alexander Balanescu, cellist Roel Dieltiens, pianist Jeno Jando, the Keller Quartet and the Pro Musica choir directed by Denes Szabo. At these concerts, classical music and folk music were heard alternatively, linked to eachother, complementing one other and occasionally at the same time. We also invited traditional village musicians to play with us; Arpad Toni, cimbalom player from the Marosszek area of Transylvania and Janos Kovacs, tambura plyaer from village of Bogyiszlo in South-Central Hungary. We selected the material for this record from recordings made at the concerts, inevitably leaving out many pieces dear to our hearts. The 2003 concert with the Pro Musica Choir takes a central role. We hope to give back the atmosphere of the concerts. Such moments for example as when a Bartók or Kodály piece organically connects with a folk song, religious folk song or traditional instrumental music. Most of the selections of this record present the traditional material behind a particular Bartok or Kodaly work."

from the pages of fRoots
In Hungary not only is it well known that the country has a huge store of traditional music, but that music is held in high artistic esteem, and instruction in traditional instruments and techniques is available in the country's educational system. These three facts are in large part a legacy of the work of the two famous Hungarian composers and meticulous folk music collectors during the early 20th century, Bartók and Kodály.

Most of the members of Muzsikás benefited from Kodály's musical education method, and as they moved deep into the study and playing of traditional music it was Bartók and Kodály's huge collections that provided material and encouraged them to go out and learn from living traditional musicians around Hungary, where they found many of the same melodies still being played. In 1999 the band made an album drawing together Bartók's classical compositions, particularly his powerful, wild violin duets, and the traditional melodies that inspired them. The same year they also began a series of annual concerts at Budapest's music school, the Liszt Academy, drawing together the two sides of Bartók and Kodály's work, collection and composition, by alternating between the composed works and the traditional tunes and songs that lie behind and within them.

This new CD is a compilation of recordings made at those concerts. Each show had guests from both the classical and traditional village sides; the recordings on the album consist mainly of the folk material rather than the classical works and feature cimbalom player Toni Árpád from Marosszék in Transylvania and, from the 2003 show, the 50-member women's choir Pro Musica of Nyireghyháza. The quality of playing of the four band members and Sebestyén's singing is, as usual, just right, full of spirit and understanding, and they integrate seamlessly with Árpád's robust, choppy style on the two tracks involving him. The choir, with none of the arch plumminess that can afflict classically-trained choirs, perform three Kodály works and one of Bartók's which sit between the band's items perfectly naturally. One of them, Kodály's Mountain Nights, segues beautifully into Sebestyén's still, calm singing of a kyrie from the Hungarian village of Lészped in Moldavia, and then into the Transylvanian Jewish The Rooster Is Crowing and on into the choir's rendering of Kodály's In The Green Wood.

Muzsikás and Sebestyén have taken the 'Bartók and Kodály sources' idea into collaboration concerts elsewhere in the world, and are clearly doing great good in raising respect across the classical/ folk divide. Perhaps there's a lesson there. - Andrew Cronshaw, fRoots

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