BARTÓK AND OTHERS IN VIENNA – SOLDIERS’ SONGS, 1918 Presented by Liszt Academy

The concert organized jointly with the Hungarian Heritage House presents a programme concept that, according to the original plans, was to have been realized in Budapest in the final year of World War I. The background was a concert in Vienna in January 1918 that featured old and new military recruitment songs of the peoples of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Bartók undertook the lion’s share of staging the Hungarian-language part of the performance (he also appeared on stage) and he involved Kodály in its preparation. Following the huge success of the production, the plan was to repeat the concert in Budapest, although expanded with musical material of the nationalities living in Greater Hungary, which was to be edited by Béla Bartók. However, history intervened and the concert was scrapped. Now, 100 years later, the time is ripe to revive the concert that Bartók planned. Programme highlights include folk music arrangements by Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály and Mrs Zoltán Kodályné, Emma Sándor, supplemented with the finest of traditional folk music of the nationalities of the Carpathian Basin.