Ferenc Farkas  (1905-2000)
Orchestral Music, Volume Six
The Sly Students Suite (1949)**
Symphony (1952)*
Preludio e fuga(1944-47)**
MÁV Symphony Orchestra/Gábor Takács-Nagy
rec. 2016, 2017, 2020, Hungary
*First Recording, **First Digital Recording
Toccata Classics TOCC0722  [65]

According to the very interesting website devoted to the composer, Ferenc Farkas composed over eight hundred works. Of those, only a tiny fraction is actively in the repertoire. His most popular work is the Ancient Hungarian Dances which exists in many different versions but in the version for wind quintet it has become a cornerstone of the that repertoire. Toccata Classics have therefore done a great service to the musical world in producing, since 2002, an ongoing series of both his chamber and orchestral works. Previous CDs have, rightly, been positively reviewed on MusicWeb (review, review, review, review).

Farkas studied in Budapest under Leo Weiner and in Respighi’s masterclasses in Rome. His music, therefore has a wonderful grounding in traditional techniques and Hungarian folk music, and is brilliantly orchestrated. He worked extensively in film and theatre and knew how to write instantly communicable music. He wrote much for the stage and cinema and had an extensive career as a teacher; his students including György Ligeti, György Kurtag, and Zsolt Durkò.

The ballet The Sly Students was commissioned in 1949 by the Budapest Opera House. The downside was that he had only one month to write the score. Like Malcolm Arnold with his score for Bridge on the River Kwai,  as soon as he had written a few pages they were sent off to the copyist and he moved onto the next section. What Farkas did not know was that his music was going to replace a score by Miklós Laurisin that had been used for the ballet a few years before. Embarrassingly and uncomfortably,  he was placed next to the jilted composer at the dress rehearsal. The ballet’s première took place in the Budapest Opera House on 19 June 1949. In the same year, he extracted a suite from the work which is recorded here.

The scenario is the usual nonsense that has plagued ballet for centuries. The director of Debrecen College, Professor Horváth, intends his daughter, Rózsika, to marry Józsi, the son of the town treasurer. But she is in love with Adám, a poor student. As a joke, Adám removes a boot from a teacher  while he snoozes on a bench and walks off with it. The teacher summons the students and asks who was responsible and Józsi denounces Adám, his love rival. Rallying around Adám, the students get Józsi drunk till he passes out and then is carried in a mock funeral march to the house of Rózsika’s father. All live happily ever after. All utter nonsense, but Farkas came up with  some great music to accompany a hackneyed story.

The suite has five movements, all full of character but very different from each other. The opening Fair in Debrecen, is a brilliant scherzo depicting the bustling fair. Part Mussorgsky’s Market at Limoges and part Kabalevsky’s Colas Breugnon,  it is a perfect introduction to the humorous ballet. All the orchestra get a good workout and the MÁV Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1945 by the Hungarian State Railways, enter wholeheartedly into the spirit of the tale. The movement could easily be extracted as an exciting standalone concert overture. The Air de Danse is an elegant affair, maybe mock elegant for the women, with much work for the solo wind who perform admirably. In the Students’ Dance the students are very well behaved, in what is apparently a version a traditional military recruitment dance, presumably for the men. The Gypsy Music opens with a raucous solo violin before entering into a typical whirlwind Hungarian take on gypsy music, familiar from Liszt to Bartók. The Pas de Deux, between Rózsika and Adám, begins softy and builds to a passionate climax. The scales used could not be other than Hungarian and their seemingly impossible love is perfectly captured in the orchestration. The finale is in three parts with music taken from the drunken scene, then the mock funeral march and finally the horseherds’ dance. It is all is very much in the style of Kodaly’s Harry Janos and none the worse for that. It is a really enjoyable work that should find a place in the concert hall.

The next work on the disc, Farkas’ only symphony, has had a chequered career. Written in 1952, it was so severely criticised at a Communist Party composer’s meeting that the composer put the score in a bottom drawer, and it was not performed complete until 2021, although over the years, various movements took on a life of their own. It is an immensely engaging work, particularly the slow movement,  which I have been happy to return to, but I do not think it is a symphony. The four movements sound like a suite from a film, maybe entitled Hungaria or some such, but I could not detect any symphonic thought over the four movements. Indeed, the work did have cinematic origins with the composer using material from his 1950 film score Liberated Land. The publicity material is quite correct in describing the work as “both big-boned and big-hearted” but to describe it as  “one of the finest of all Hungarian symphonies” is, to my mind, overegging the pudding.

The first movement subtitled in memoriam 4. 4. 1945, the date of the Battle of Budapest, was published under the title Symphonic Overture. In that context, it works very well. There is much drama and heroic writing in Hungarian modes ending with a blaze of glorious triumph. The players maintain the tension over its almost ten minutes’ duration and the brass are on great form.

The second movement Elegia is the most symphonic in construction. I think it may have the wrong title as it is not in any way elegiac but rather optimistic, like the calm after the storm. There is some wonderful chordal writing for the brass and woodwind, which is perfectly in time. At about seven minutes in, a harp figure ushers in a Vaughan Williams, in pastoral mode, like a coda full of a mystical delight. Maybe the promised land is here.

The composer reworked the third movement as an independent Scherzo Sinfonico and it is a bucolic affair, but I do not think that the pentatonic main tune, first introduced  and however well played by a clarinet, is quite interesting enough for a five-minute movement.

Likewise, the main, modally heroic theme of the finale is not up to symphonic development. This was one of the criticisms of the work from his fellow composers as he remembered: “In my last movement in particular, I was criticized for not having found a sufficiently recognizable theme.” If the theme is not up to its job, the structure works well enough and the work ends in a blaze of optimism, even if it sounds forced.

Farkas was the first Hungarian composer to attempt writing serial music, but as his website notes, the composer said, “For fear of sanctions, I stopped using dodecaphony” and “to provide for my family, I accepted many orders.” In the final work on the disc, the Preludio e Fuga, we hear Farkas trying his hand at serial writing. He admitted it was not strictly serial but  even then it really was not his style, and his heart does not seem to be in it. The overall bleakness gives a dark ending to an otherwise joyful disc.

I cannot help comparing Farkas to his contemporary Miklós Rózsa. Both had amazing compositional technique, were brilliant orchestrators, and their music was grounded in Hungarian folk music – but Rózsa flew once he left Hungary while Farkas was maybe held back by the restrictions of the Communist regime he lived under. His music, while enormously engaging, always seems safe. Still, I am very glad to have it. 

The production values are up to Toccata’s usual high standards with informative notes by László Gombos. A little from the left field, the Toccata Classics logo has to be one of the best designs in contemporary music. 

Paul RW Jackson 

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