Kodály 139 Presented by Liszt Academy

Zoltán Kodály's birthday has been a red-letter day in Hungarian music history for decades, and this year is no different. In the first half of the concert, several songs will be performed from the Op. 1 cycle, composed between 1907 and 1909; these will be followed by the Duo, written in the first year of World War I and performed by Imre Waldbauer and Jenő Kerpely in the last year of the war. The second half of the concert will feature a performance of the organ transcript of Missa brevis in honor of the influential master. The composition, created under adventurous conditions, was conceived in 1942, in Galyatető, as an organ mass that is a so-called silent mass without text. Kodály reworked the piece at the end of 1944, in a shelter while bombs were falling on Budapest, and it was first performed in the cloakroom of the Opera House in February the following year. The organ transcript was released in Hungary and England in 1947, and we will hear it in the interpretation of Balázs Szabó, lecturer at the Liszt Academy.