The art of Emil Petrovics

Emil Petrovics is one of the most prominent personalities among Hungarian post-war composers. His career and his works are examples of how an artist can retain his personality in a country that is politically dependent of a foreign power for decades. Emil Petrovics did not join composers' groups or workshops, foreign study-trips brought no sudden changes in his music. He is deeply rooted in his motherland, but in his case "Mother Earth" means several different models: the culture of the many nationalities of his native town, Nagybecskerek (today: Zrenjanin), where his maternal grandfather was the choir master of the Catholic church; the Budapest Academy of Music, where he studied under Ferenc Farkas and Zoltán Kodály in the first half of the 1950's, finally, the lifestyle of artists in Budapest in the 1960's. The world of Petrovics can be defined by a love for the Hungarian language (Cantatas, Book of Jonah oratorio), the directness of theatric effects (Operas: C'est la guerre, Lysistrate, Crime and Punishment), the colourful folklore of the Carpathian Basin and the folklore of the city, from jazz to musicals. The material of his music is the totality of the world of sounds surrounding him.
Following styles like the weather vane follows the direction of the wind is alien to Petrovics' art. The decisiveness of choice doesn't mean a lack of style, however. On the contrary, it presupposes distinctive stylistic marks, the surrendering of which, in Petrovics' case, would have led to a weakening of his personality as a musician. Important oeuvres have a destiny of their own. Emil Petrovics was amazingly mature and already professionally accomplished" at the start of his career. His First Cantata and Flute Concerto, written in 1955, in the year he graduated, both prove this, as well as the first piece on this record, the String Quartet No. 1: it was with this piece that the young and yet unknown maestro from behind the "Iron Curtain" won first prize in Liege in 1959 at the Competition for Composers.


String quartets in Hungarian composing

For composers studying at the Academy of Music in Budapest, writing string quartets has a special significance, it is almost a ritual convention. The touchstone of becoming a composer is writing a quartet for the homogeneous-sounding strings, it's the perfect example of composition. Four parts that do not allow for diversion from the essential process of the attraction and repulsion of sounds, in which the smallest error in form or construction reveals the awkwardness of an uninitiated hand. At the turn of the century, Leo Weiner commenced his career with a string-trio and a string quartet, as an homage to Beethoven. Both Bartók and Kodály included string quartets in the repertoire of their first author's night (1910), Erno Dohnányi enriched the late-romantic repertory with two quartets, László Lajtha composed ten string quartets, and for the young composers of the 1950's and 1960's (Pál Járdányi, Zsolt Durkó, György Kurtág) this tradition was almost compulsory. A whole line of famous Hungarian string quartet ensembles inspired Petrovics, from the Waldbauer-Kerpely quartet (and even earlier the Hubay-Popper quartet) to the Bartók quartet, which was formed round about the time when Petrovics composed his first string quartet. The quartet was dedicated to the Weiner string quartet, but it was the Bartók Quartet which brought it international fame, perhaps also inspiring the String Quartet No. 2, written for that excellent ensemble.


String Quartet No. 1

Behind the harsh dissonances of the String Quartet No. 1 lie classical form patterns, what's more, certain emotional-rhetorical motifs refer to classical models, as in the main theme of the first movement, which reminds one of Mozart's harassed movements in minor. The music score itself resembles the classical arrangement of the different parts. This is all the more interesting as the quartet was written at a time when Hungarian composers were liberated from the ideological pressure of Stalinism. The historical moment must surely have tempted the young composer to use many modern effects. In this respect the twenty-eight-year-old Emil Petrovics wrote a remarkably restrained quartet. Variety within harmonious proportions - this was crucial, the most important piece of advice that his maestro, Ferenc Farkas, gave Petrovics. Naturally, the quartet evokes not only the classics: owing to the large scale of tones, we are reminded of Debussy and Ravel, the two giants of quartets, especially when listening to the melodies in the second movement and because of the plucked (pizzicato) sound. The third movement is the response of a young and talented Hungarian composer to Bartók's moving, slow themes. Few people in Hungary understood this sound at the time and even fewer composed in this style. The influence of the Second Viennese School" (Schönberg, Berg, Webern) is undeniable in this movement, perhaps through Bartók's mediation. The most characteristic aspects of Petrovics' musical personality can be heard in the finale. Excepting Bartók, this kind of rhythmical talent is not typical in the history of 20th century Hungarian composition and it is especially unusual in compositions written for strings. A whole treatise could be written about the metrical changes of the movement or the rhythmical divisions. The basic beat, five equal lengths, each with triple rhythm groups, is unusual and original. Apart from Bartók, Stravinsky (Le sacré du printemps) may have inspired it. If this supposition is true, then Emil Petrovics was the first of the post-war generation of Hungarian composers to react to Igor Stravinsky's epoch-making music.


String Quartet No. 2

Emil Petrovics' String Quartet No. 2 is as fine a piece as his first one. In the String Quartet No. 1, the ideals of a young composer starting out on his carrier balance out the ideas of exuberant talent. In the second, the quintessence of three decades of artistic work is crystallized into the quartet. In this mature piece, an individual sound and the general language of Hungarian composers, which has strengthened with the passing of time, and can now be identified as the style of the 1960's and 1970's, mingles into a whole. Certain stylistic marks can be defined such as a system of motifs based on interval-cells, which widen into a declamatory tune, a chain of short, differing part-forms often of opposing character, a sort of free variation technique. The character of the work is made more lively owing to the melodious building up of the first movement's slow parts, the Transylvanian-type of weeping, wailing tunes, the rhetoric pathos of the cadenza which introduces the third movement, using all four instruments, and becoming increasingly threatening, and the metrical playfulness of the fast parts, especially the unity of form at the end. As in his earlier compositions, Petrovics does not force experimental sounds on the musicians and the audience just for the sake of it. We can discover such motifs as a logical result of solutions of molding and atmosphere (there are some extremely interesting sound effects in the final part). One of the most beautiful and inspired parts of the string quartet and of Petrovics's whole oeuvre is the middle movement. The composer places the parts of the four instruments most brilliantly, creating a unique harmony from sounds that are in themselves dissonant. These moments evoke the spirit of masterpieces of the highest order and represent the attitude of a composer who respects sounds in themselves.


Rhapsodies

With his I. and II. Rhapsody, Emil Petrovics contributed to the repertoire of solo stringed instruments, following on the one hand one of the important traditions of Hungarian composing originating from Kodály and Bartók, on the other, the practice of musical competitions. The Second Rhapsody was written for the International Viola (tenor violin) Competition held in Budapest in 1984 (the composer's transcription for violoncello can be heard on this recording), and the I. Rhapsody, written a little earlier (1982), was often played at violin competitions as a compulsory work of a contemporary composer. If a Hungarian composer entitles a work of his as rhapsody, we must turn to the rhapsodies of Liszt and Bartók in order to place it historically, to those compositions characterized by folk music melodies, fast and slow movements, as well as virtuoso instrumental performance. Only the last characteristic, virtuoso instrumental performance, is true of Emil Pertovics' rhapsodies. The thematic and formal conception, and the means of communicating it are completely different. Hearing it for the first time it seems like improvisation, soaring imagination, but the unity of the system of motifs and the logical structure of the music are just as important. The cello rhapsody starts out as a monotomic parent-cell, while the violin rhapsody starts out as a ditomic parent-cell, and like a natural organism, they both grow, multiply as if by cell-division, become more intricate. This, however, is just one part of the story". More important is the hidden polyphony, which makes the solo instrument a dramatic medium. The polyphony of solo stringed compositions can be observed from the 17th century and this tradition culminates wonderfully in Bach. Every composer composing for solo string instruments cannot help think of Bach's sonatas and orchestral scores. In the rhapsodies of Petrovics, another principle asserts itself. There is a dramatic dialogue between the opposing materials. A dynamic, rhythmic, tessituric and melodious contrast defines the experience of reception, beside his virtuosity and instrumental talent, the personality and imagination of the soloist also becomes evident. Rhapsodies demand a dramatic performance: the musician must create a stage with only four strings, based on a screenplay that has been noted down.


The performers

The Bartók Quartet was formed more than forty years ago by first violin player Péter Komlós. The group adopted Béla Bartók's name in 1963. The quartet perpetuates the art of the last 100 years of excellent Hungarian string quartets, not only because of the Central-European idioms of interpretation, but also owing to the one-time masters of the Budapest Academy of Music, Leó Weiner and András Mihály. The Bartók String Quartet is one of the world's best ensembles. This statement is true not only because it was written by a critic of the New York Times, but also because in the past forty years the quartet has given more than 3500 concerts in the greatest concert halls of Europe, Asia and America and has been invited to the most important international festivals (Salzburg, Edinburgh, Spoleto, Aix-en-Provence, Luzern, Tangelwood). Its repertory includes the complete classical and romantic string-quartet literature as well as the masterpieces of the genre's most significant 20th century masters (first and foremost Béla Bartók, whose six string quartets have been performed in series many times by the group, always in a new interpretation and always received with interest). The quartet's sound and their open musical spirit has inspired several contemporary composers. The Bartók String Quartet has twice been awarded the highest Hungarian artistic prize (Kossuth prize 1970 and 1997) as well as the UNESCO prize (1981) and the Bartók-Pásztory prize (1986).

László Mező (1939-) studied at the Budapest Academy of Music as a pupil of Antal Friss. Later, after successfully participating in several international competitions, he studied in the USA in 1965-66 with a Ford scholarship. He was taught by Pablo Casals and Gregor Piatigorsky. His name has become one with the Bartók String Quartet; he was one of the founding members. Besides playing in a chamber orchestra, he is also a significant soloist and teacher. He is head of the violoncello faculty at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest. He has been awarded several artistic prizes both as a member of the string quartet and as an individual artist (Liszt prize 1968, Eminent Artist 1981, Kossuth prize 1997).

The promising young Hungarian violinist, Antal Szalai (1981-) is presently studying at the Budapest Academy of Music as a pupil of Péter Komlós, the first violin player of the Bartók String Quartet. He has been playing the violin since the age of five. His teacher at music school and the conservatory was László Dénes and he also participated in the master courses of Lóránd Fenyves, Tibor Varga and György Pauk. Isaac Stern himself spoke highly of him. He has won several music competitions (János Koncz Violin competition 1989,1992, Leó Weiner Sonata Competition 1997). He plays the violin with flawless virtuosity, with a richly melodious sound.

András Batta