Programme:
•Kornél Fekete-Kovács: PRELUDE TO THE NIGHT
•Zoltán Kodály: EVENING
•Gábor Subicz: DETERMINATION
•Zoltán Kodály: DIRGE
•János Ávéd: ETERNITY
•Kornél Fekete-Kovács: FALSE CALL
•Zoltán Kodály: TREACHEROUS RAY OF SUNLIGHT
•Kristóf Bacsó: THE SCAMP
•Zoltán Kodály: MÁTRA PICTURES
•Gábor Cseke: LOYALTY
•Kornél Fekete-Kovács: DUSK
•Zoltán Kodály: THE PEACOCK
•Kristóf Bacsó: THE PEACOCK
•Kornél Fekete-Kovács: CHILDREN’S SONG
•Zoltán Kodály: THE GYPSY IS EATING COTTAGE CHEESE
Hungarian National Choir (choirmaster: Csaba Somos)
Modern Art Orchestra (bandleader: Kornél Fekete-Kovács)
Conductor: Kornél Fekete-Kovács and Csaba Somos (a cappella works)
Modern Art Orchestra
Following the highly successful 2018 album Bartók: Fifteen Hungarian Peasant Songs inspired Kornél Fekete-Kovács, artistic director of the Modern Art Orchestra, the ensemble pay their respects to other giants of Hungarian music history besides Bartók. In the second part of the series, the MAO and the creative compositional workshop that comprises part of it will pay homage to Zoltán Kodály.
Kodály’s oeuvre had an enormous influence on 20th-century Hungarian music. This is perhaps most marked in the culmination of the choir movement and its literature.
Their joint successes of recent years have clearly demonstrated that the Hungarian National Choir is capable of being the MAO’s most outstanding partner in the realisation of this special production.
An important criterion in the selection of the works was to assure that the program would provide a cross-section of Kodály’s choral works. In addition to the original choral works, the sound of the choir also plays a major role in the newly created pieces. The independent compositions of the composers in the orchestra – Kornél Fekete-Kovács, Gábor Cseke, Kristóf Bacsó, János Ávéd and Gábor Subicz – pay tribute to the composer’s oeuvre in the form of transitional music.
The Peacock – A tribute to Zoltán Kodály
Since the founding of the Modern Art Orchestra in 2005, it has dedicated itself to the re-evaluation of boundaries between genre, considering its mission to knowledgably express and hand down the Hungarian musical tradition. The large orchestra’s 2018 project Bartók: Fifteen Hungarian Peasant Songs was the first work that originated as part of the series paying homage to giant Hungarian composers. The presentation of the musical material, which was also recorded on the album and has been an unbroken international success ever since, earned it the Artisjus Award. Based on the idea of Kornél Fekete-Kovács, the artistic director of the ensemble, the creative compositional workshop operating alongside the MAO and the orchestra will pay tribute to Zoltán Kodály as the second part of the series.
Kodály’s oeuvre had an enormous influence on 20th-century Hungarian music. This is perhaps most marked in the culmination of the choir movement and its literature.
Their joint successes of recent years have clearly demonstrated that the Hungarian National Choir is capable of being the MAO’s most outstanding partner in the realisation of this special production, as the ensemble has been nurturing the tradition of choral music at the highest level for decades.
Through their performances ignoring boundaries between genres, the MAO makes contemporary music receptible by inspiring composers and regularly broadcasting their works, striving to make people love high-quality instrumental music and widely disseminate quality music.
With their performance in THE PEACOCK – A tribute to Zoltán Kodály, the Modern Art Orchestra and the Hungarian National Choir pay homage to the oeuvre and spirituality of Zoltán Kodály, one of the most influential Hungarian composers, musicologists, music teachers and folk music researchers. In addition to Kodály’s settings of poems and folk song suites featured in the program, the composers of the MAO will perform in the language of today’s music, with works by János Ávéd, Kristóf Bacsó, Gábor Cseke, Kornél Fekete-Kovács and Gábor Subicz. As well as the sound of the original choral works, the sound of the choir also plays a key role in the newly created pieces.
“Without choral singing, no one would be a good musician”, wrote Kodály in his text Who Is a Good Musician?
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