Hungarian String Trios

Dohnanyi, Ernst von, Kodaly, Zoltan, Weiner, Leo

Deutsches Streichtrio

CPO 999950

When thinking of Hungarian music of the first half of the 20th century, the names "Bartók and Kodály" immediately come to mind. The program of this CD - an old EMI recording as a cpo re-release - does not intend to document the incomparable splendor of the Bartók-Kodály dyad. Rather, Hungarian music is evoked here under the sign of "the way it was then," that time when the development of twentieth-century Hungarian music was still under the sign of Romanticism and Bartók and Kodály were already recognized.

Leó Weiner's "String Trio op. 6", the "Intermezzo for String Trio" by Zoltán Kodály and Dohnanyi's masterpiece, the "Serenade op. 10" were great successes with the public at the time they were written - between 1902 and 1908. All three composers, like Bartók, had studied at the Budapest Academy of Music, whose outstanding professors at the beginning of the century were almost without exception Germans, Hungarians of German descent or German-speaking Jews and taught in the spirit of the German school. Romantic-swinging pieces with themes of rhythmic conciseness in the beautiful-sounding rendition by the German String Trio with Hans Kalafusz, Jürgen Weber and Rainer Ginzel.

Works:

•Dohnányi: Serenade in C major for String Trio Op. 10
• Kodály: Intermezzo for string trio
• Weiner, Leó: String Trio in G minor, Op. 6

CD x 1

CPO

20/11/2003

761203995028