It was on the cover of his retrospective CD that I first saw the composer Csaba Szabó. In my teaching years imagining the parents of the students from their stories was a regular and fascinating habit for me. The mischievous and autonomous imagination built up faces, behaviour and gestures.

Mátyás Seiber (1905-1960), after being a student of Kodaly at the Academy, spent 6 years in Germany and most of his later life in England. The compositions on this retrospective CD were so ingeniously selected that we feel they give a representative cross-section of the entire oeuvre.

Hans Koessler (1853-1926) was a famous teacher whose students included the four greats in early 20tzh Century Hungarian music: Bartók, Kodály, Dohnányi, and Weiner. He was German by birth and education, while Emanuel Moór (1863-1931) started out in Hungary, later moving to Western Europe, with tours to the US. He was a good friend of Pablo Casals, though this cello sonata was written for a Russian cellist in 1900.

Revival. The recording of Hans Koessler ‘s and Emanuel Moór’s works sounds from my laptop, I look out and see lights through the window, Budapest by night. It is the revival of the past, of the near and the far.