Mátyás Seiber: Chamber pieces and songs

Hungaroton Classic

Mátyás Seiber was one of the favourite students of Kodály. He died in a car accident aged fifty-five -when Kodaly composed a touching lament.

We still do not know much about him but to counterbalance this deficit, Hungaroton released in the year of the cosmopolitan’s 100 th birthday his first full retrospective CD. We can get acquainted with this music pedagogy once highly respected in Great- Britain and elsewhere from many angles. His was the spicy humoured composition for the 1954 Halas & Bachelor cartoon adaptation of Orwell’s Animal Farm, but he was equally interested in jazz, the twelve-note system, the teaching technique for the piano accordion or Moldovian folk songs. The selection offers a sample from every period of the composer, in total nine compositions in a well-constructed and elaborate performance. The contributors to the recording were:- Lesley-Jane Rogers and Andrea Meláth (singers), David Frühwirth (violin), Péter Szabó (cello), László Ernyei (accordon) and Zsuzsa Kollár (piano).

VT

Translation by Susan Kapás

Gramofon
January 2005