Galánta, 1918
Sunday, December 7, 2025
Golden Hall, Musikverein, Vienna
What a colourful collection to set before the Sabbath-morning spectators, beginning with Kodály’s Dances of Galánta (1933). In the score, the composer advised the following: “Galánta is a small Hungarian market-town known to the travelers from Vienna to Budapest, where the composer passed seven years of his childhood. There existed at that time a famous Gypsy band which has since disappeared.” Jakub Hrůša and the Vienna Philharmonic gave a neighbourly account of this evocative music – intense, witty, exhilarating – with some fine clarinet contributions, and unanimous violins at speed. (By the way, Galánta is these days placed in Slovakia.) Even when composer-truncated into Suite form, Bartók’s score for The Miraculous Mandarin, a “pantomime” that required the beady eye of a censor, leaves a big impression, as here, full of dangerous mystery and graphic description for muggings, murder, and a Mandarin that refuses to die until the decoy prostitute for the criminals shows him some love. Hrůša elicited much telling detail en route to a thrilling ‘chase’, played brilliantly at an uncompromising manic tempo (maybe too much), although the very end was curiously fudged.
Opening the second half, The Wood (Wild) Dove, the last of Dvořák’s four consecutive musical settings of grisly tales by Erben, the composer’s Opuses 107-110. “A young woman poisons her husband and feigns utter grief at his funeral. Her deception, however, cannot last long. She falls in love with a young man and, within a month, they are married in flamboyant style. One day a wild dove alights on the grave of the dead man and its piteous cooing constantly reminds the woman of her guilt. Finally, unable to bear the weight of her conscience, the murderess takes her own life.” Closing the concert, Janáček’s Gogol-inspired Taras Bulba “depicting the tragic fate of the Cossack leader Taras Bulba and his sons, Ostap and Andrei, during a war against Poland, focusing on themes of fierce nationalism, betrayal (Andrei’s love for a Polish woman leads to his death by his father’s hand), capture, and martyrdom (Ostap’s execution), all set to music reflecting Janáček’s Czech roots and admiration for Slavic heroism. The three movements vividly portray these deaths: Andrei’s betrayal, Ostap’s torture, and Taras’s fiery end, ending with his defiant prophecy.”
Both performances were compelling and painterly, the Dvořák, for me in need of rehabilitation (the weakest of these four pieces), cooed its way into my affections through heightened dramatic and expressive intentions, conductor and orchestra focussed on musical values to feed the storyline; not quite a masterpiece, although finding more riches in it than hitherto is gratifying. Never any doubts about the Janáček, great music, given a rendition of considerable power and panache, tenderness too, that blazed with conviction as to the composer’s individuality and operatic abilities (hooked into by Hrůša’s stagecraft leanings, currently much-appreciated at Covent Garden), Bulba’s closing prophecy igniting the airwaves, the Philharmoniker as heroic as the Cossack.
This thoroughly rehearsed attractive programme now stays in the Musikverein, tomorrow, then travels to Linz, and returns to Vienna, the Konzerthaus, for Thursday.
***
Zoltán Kodály Tänze aus Galánta
Béla Bartók “The Miraculous Mandarin”, op. 19, Sz. 73, (Ballet Suite)
Antonín Dvořák Die Waldtaube. Symphonische Dichtung, op. 110
Leoš Janáček Taras Bulba. Rhapsodie für Orchester