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© 2003–2004 WASBE
Photographs © 2003 Anthony Reimer or Egil & Brith Gundersen (used with permission)
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of WASBE.
Symphonic Band of Kiskunfélegyháza
This community band from Hungary gave us an interesting programme of Hungarian and international music, and in their repertoire session the next morning, presented three other international works. They also brought their mayor along to represent the city. He and the community should be extremely proud of what must be one of the finest community bands of its type.
The first half celebrated significant birthdays of three senior Hungarian composers: Kamillo Lendvay, Frigyes Hidas and Laszlo Dubrovay. Lendvay and Hidas are seventy-five this year and are WASBE members. Both have contributed generously to the wind repertoire. I find Lendvay's Festseiel Overtureis a useful work but not for me as intrinsically interesting as his brilliant Concertino for Piano and Wind Ensemble. Hidas is for me an uneven composer, but Coriolanus is one of his most striking scores and — together with the Lendvay overture — is well worth exploring by a college band or community orchestra.
Their younger colleague, Laszlo Dubrovay, is sixty. A former student of Stockhausen, he has embraced some of that composer’s anarchic approach to composition, but has retained his links with traditional music and above all his sense of humour. His music, with its use of avant garde effects, is often genuinely funny. His Ballet Suite is in four movements and introduces a fascinating sound-world.
In the second half of the programme, I was delighted to conduct this excellent band in Gyorgy Ranki's King Pomade Suite No 2. The swirl of the opening movement, Market, has for me all of the energy of the Fair in Stravinsky's Petrouchka, while the second and third movements are again genuinely funny. (His Trombone Concerto, Tales of Father Goose is another brilliant and humorous work.)
One of the outstanding works to emerge from the first South American wind band conference in 2002 was Retratos do Brasil (Pictures of Brazil) by Hudson Nogueira. This is an extensive tone poem, portraying Brazil from the jungle to the big city, and when we first heard the work in Tatui, it was accompanied by a picture show illustrating the scenes. The music stands by itself and draws on Brazilian rhythms and folk material. Also well worth exploring is the final work of this programme, Zagorske Slike by Davor Bobi'c, a Croatian composer and conductor. The world here is perhaps reminiscent of Janacek, fragments of folk tunes turned into ostinati, and innovative scoring.
Ferenc Jankovszki is clearly an excellent trainer, who gets exactly what he wants from an outstanding community band. I found this to be a strong concert with a great deal of contrast and interest.
The Lendvay and Hidas works are published by Edition Musica Budapest, the Dubrovay by Stormworks. The three works in the second half need publishers.