Rich and Subtle Quartet Playing from Hungary

Johnny Lam (working in the music field)

The name of the Kodály Quartet is mostly associated with their renowned complete recording of Haydn’s string quartets, which makes their name known to international audience. This quartet just celebrated their 50th anniversary in 2016. Despite their personnel changes over the years, their no-frills playing, yet with rich expressive palette with subtlety, makes them an individual voice among many edgy-playing young ensembles nowadays.

The founding of the Kodály Quartet is largely associated with the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, Budapest. In 1966, four students of the academy formed the Sebastyén Quartet, which was soon awarded the jury’s special diploma at the 1966 Geneva International Quartet Competition, and won the First Prize at the 1968 Leó Weiner Quartet Competition in Budapest. Their victories were soon recognised by the Hungarian Ministry of Culture and Education, who granted them approval to use the name of the then-deceased national composer Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967) as the quartet’s name in 1972. Since then, the fame of the Kodály Quartet soon raised nationally with their recordings of Hungarian composers for their national record label, including works by Kodály, Dohnányi and contemporary composers of their country.

Even the current members of the Kodály Quartet are all graduates of the Franz Liszt Academy. The first violinist Falvay, who is the Second Prize recipient of the 1979 József Szigeti International Violin Competition, and the winner of 1980 Hubay Competition, joined the Kodály Quartet in 1980, is now the longest-serving member of the quartet. Cellist Éder, who founded his own quartet in 1973, and won the Second Prize in ARD International Music Competition in Munich, joined the Kodály Quartet in 1990. Fejérvári, who attended chamber music classes conducted by renowned composer Kurtág and pianist Schiff, joined the quartet as violist at the turn of the century. With Bangó who joined the quartet as second violinist recently in 2015, the current Kodály Quartet comprises of 4 members who excel and are well-experienced in chamber music and ensemble playing with dedication and passion.

Since 1988, the Kodály Quartet recorded a number of Haydn’s string quartets for a record company and these recordings soon received well critical acclaims. That company then promptly expanded the recording project to cover the composer’s entire oeuvre for string quartet, which took 12 years to complete. The same company also recorded the complete quartet works by Beethoven and Schubert with the Kodály Quartet, as well as works by Debussy and Ravel. Their album with Haydn’s Six String Quartets, Op. 76 received a Penguin Guide Rosette. The Gramophone also praised the quartet as a “polished, beautifully balanced group”.

The Kodály Quartet will make their long-due re-appearence on Hong Kong concert stage after several decades, bringing works by three Austro-German musical masters at the turn of 18th and 19th centuries – Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. The three works featured in the concert were written within the span of merely 22 years (1784-1806), but they represented entirely different facets of quartet writing. The works in the concert also brought the life of three composers at the crossroad – Mozart’s String Quartet No. 17, K. 458 is part of the six quartets dedicated to Haydn. Inspired by the latter’s special quartet writing, giving the four instruments equal share in terms of musical argument, Mozart had to seriously work out these six quartets in an unusually long time span. While Haydn’s String Quartets, Op. 77, commissioned by Prince Lobkowitz in 1799, are among his last full statement of the genre, at the time when Beethoven composed his first group of six quartets, Op. 18, and dedicated to Lobkowitz, challenging Haydn’s supremacy in the quartet genre. Kodály Quartet’s Hong Kong programme well reflects the stylistic changes of quartet writing during the turn of the century.

Counted among the foremost quartets of the world, Berlin-based Artemis Quartet has earned accolades with its exceptional level of musical intensity and finesse. The ensemble has performed at numerous great musical centres and international festivals in Europe, the United States, Asia, South America, and Australia, receiving overwhelming responses from audiences and critics alike.

Named after the Greek goddess of the hunt, the Artemis Quartet was founded in 1989 at the University of Music Lübeck. The ensemble’s important mentors have been violinist Walter Levin, pianist Alfred Brendel, the Alban Berg Quartet, Juilliard Quartet, and Emerson Quartet. Since 2004, the ensemble has curated its own seasons and hosted dedicated series at several major international venues including the Berlin Philharmonie, Wiener Konzerthaus, and Munich’s Prince Regent Theatre, etc. In 2013, the Beethoven-Haus Bonn made the quartet honorary members of the Beethoven-Haus Association for the ensemble’s interpretation of Beethoven’s works.

The Artemis Quartet will bring us a programme of diversity delights including Beethoven’s first foray into the string quartet genre, Schumann’s novelty from his own “chamber music year”, and Janáček’s frenetic response to The Kreutzer Sonata, a controversial novella by Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy.

Vietnamese-Canadian pianist Dang Thai Son captured the attention of the musical world when, at age of 22 in 1980, he won the Gold Medal at the 10th International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. He became the first Asian pianist to win top honours at a major international piano competition.

Born in Hanoi, Vietnam, Dang Thai Son began learning piano while the Vietnam War was underway. His mother Thai Thi Lien, who studied music in Paris and Prague, was his first teacher. In 1974, visiting Russian pianist Isaac Katz saw the potential of Dang and arranged for Dang, at age 19 in 1977, to continue his study at the Moscow Conservatory under the tutelage of Vladimir Natanson and Dmitry Bashkirov.

Today, Dang Thai Son continues a vibrant international performance and teaching career. His career has taken him to over 40 countries and in collaborations with many world-class orchestras and conductors. His sense of sonority, poetry, and refinement has captivated audiences around the world. In his concert, Dang Thai Son will bring us a programme full of lush sounds and romance with music by Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, and the legendary Polish pianist-composer Paderewski, as a synthesis of the pianist’s aesthetics.

The New York Times praised Paco Peña who “combines rapid-fire flourishes with a colorist’s sense of shading、 this listener cannot recall hearing any guitarist with a more assured mastery of his instrument”.

This legendary Flamenco Maestro, along with a troupe of handpicked musicians and dancers, will present the essence of this passionate art form here in May.

Over a career spanning five decades, Peña has garnered high respect and enormous admiration across the world for his virtuosity on the Flamenco guitar and his transformation of this archetypal art form. Born in the Andalusian city of Córdoba, Spain and calling London his second home, Peña brought together both cultures. He has expanded the possibilities of Flamenco and changed perceptions of the art form, bringing originality and energy to Flamenco performance by mining the richness of its traditions while being inspired by contemporary culture.

With the magnificent playing at its heart, Peña’s latest production, Esencias, reconnects the contemporary takes of Flamenco with its roots in Spain and explores the greatest potential of this passionate art form with the combination of solos and ensembles in dances and musical numbers. “Although the roots of Flamenco are deeply imbedded in the soil and culture of Andalusia, it deals with emotional ingredients that are universal and timeless and, therefore, felt and understood by all human beings”, says Peña.

It is a not-to-be-missed performance!

One of the foremost singers of her generation, mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená was born in Brno, the Czech Republic, and studied in her hometown and Bratislava. Kožená’s profound musicianship attracted critical acclaim from an early age.

The Sixth International Mozart Competition in Salzburg in 1995 opened up her successful career and Kožená established her reputation as an excellent performer who can hold song recital, concert hall and opera audiences spellbound. She has since developed a broad scope of repertoire ranges across Monteverdi, Mozart, Mahler and Martinů, collaborated with many great musicians and orchestras, and performed in the most prestigious halls and festivals over the world.

After five years, Kožená tours Hong Kong in the company of the Basal-based La Cetra Baroque Orchestra with the programme Con che soavi accenti under the direction of Andrea Marcon, a leading interpreter of the Baroque and Classical periods. Kožená has recorded three releases of the arias of Handel, Vivaldi and Monteverdi. This collaboration brings vivid musical scenes of the first half of the 17th century Venice to life, focusing on Monteverdi, the master who developed opera to its full dramatic and musical potentials, and chamber works by Uccellini, Merula and Marini, virtuosic violinist-composers who gave instrumental music its pedigree.　

Juxtaposing with a new commission inspired by Monteverdi’s Lamento di Arianna and the incredibly intense Sequenza III (1964) for female voice by Berio, this programme presents not only the sheer beauty of Kožená’s voice but also the extraordinary versatility and virtuosity have been recognised throughout her career.

Evgeny Kissin, one of the world’s greatest living pianists, makes each stage appearance a memorable one. He will return to Hong Kong in October for an exhilarating recital, offering a selection of exuberant and colouristic preludes of Rachmaninov, and the grandest sonata Beethoven had ever written, his Sonata No. 29, “Hammerklavier”. Its sheer scale, density of thought, and technical difficulty exceeded that of any predecessor and is considered a monumental masterpiece in the piano literature.

Born in Moscow in 1971, Kissin, a child prodigy, came to international attention in 1984 when he performed both of the Chopin concertos with the Moscow State Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of 12. The live recording of this concert was released and entranced listeners worldwide. He has since appeared with most of the great orchestras and conductors in the world.

Well-recognised as one of the most captivating interpreters of Romantic masterworks during his teens, Kissin has since flourished as one of the world’s most charismatic and visionary performers. His musicality, the poetic quality of his interpretations, and his extraordinary virtuosity have earned him the veneration and admiration throughout the world. A concert not to be missed.