Hungaroton: Ferenc Farkas - Songs from Seven Decades - Andrea Meláth, Tünde Szabóki, István Dominkó - CD

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Product Details:

• UPC: 5991813277022
• Catalog Number: HCD 32770
• Product Type: CD
• Label: Hungaroton
• Composer: Ferenc Farkas (1905-2000)
• Performers: Andrea Meláth (mezzo-soprano), Tünde Szabóki (soprano), István Dominkó (piano)
• Release Year: 2015
• Genre: Classical / Art Song / Hungarian Contemporary
• Condition: Brand New, Factory Sealed

Product Features

• Format: 1 CD
• Total Running Time: 76:14
• Tracks: 48
• Packaging: Jewel case, factory shrink-wrapped
• Language: Hungarian and French (sung), Hungarian/English bilingual program
• Manufactured in the EU
• Distributed by: Fotexnet Kft., Budapest

Overview

Ferenc Farkas composed for over seven decades - from the 1920s through the 1990s - and this single disc draws a line through the full arc of that career using the most intimate form he worked in: the art song. It is a rare and focused portrait of a composer whose output was vast but whose smaller vocal pieces have often been overshadowed by his orchestral and film work.

The program ranges across Hungarian poetry, French troubadour songs, Shakespeare settings, and original cycles, covering everything from spare early miniatures to the richly harmonized late works. What holds it together is Ferenc Farkas's unmistakable voice - rooted in Hungarian folk inflection, shaped by his studies with Ottorino Respighi in Rome, and always in service of the text.

Mezzo-soprano Andrea Meláth carries the lion's share of the program with authority and warmth. Soprano Tünde Szabóki brings a contrasting brightness to her contributions, and pianist István Dominkó navigates the stylistic range from neo-Romantic to mildly modernist without ever making the shifts feel abrupt. The track listing runs 48 items across 76 minutes - short pieces, mostly, where Farkas proves again that economy of means is not the same as simplicity of thought.

For listeners who know Farkas only through his orchestral catalog, this is a genuinely different angle on one of Hungary's most important 20th-century composers.

Interesting Facts

• Ferenc Farkas was born in 1905 in Nagykanizsa and studied composition in Budapest and later in Rome under Ottorino Respighi - an influence audible in his polished handling of voice and texture.
• He taught at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest for decades and counted György Kurtág and György Ligeti among his pupils.
• Farkas composed music for over 80 films between the 1930s and 1960s, making him one of the most prolific film composers in Hungarian cinema history.
• The Shakespeare settings on this disc draw on texts from Twelfth Night and As You Like It - two comedies whose blend of wit and melancholy suited Farkas's lyrical instincts particularly well.
• Farkas lived to the age of 95, composing into his final years; his long creative life is precisely what makes a "songs from seven decades" survey both possible and musically coherent.

Track Listing

1-5. Öt francia trubadúr dallam / Five troubadour songs - 5:02 6-9. Eszterlánc / An Esther chain - 6:15 10-12. Három dal / Three songs - 4:47

1. Mély esti csendben / In the deep evening silence - 2:14
2. Le Sylphe / The Sylph - 1:08
3. Gyöngy / A pearl - 1:30
4. Fordulat / A turn - 1:44
5. Láng / Flame - 1:22
6. Sonnet VII de Louise Labé - 3:01
7. Nyárvégi csillagok / Stars at the end of summer - 3:10
8. Milyen? / What is it like? - 0:48
9. Pour Isabelle / For Isabelle - 0:43
10. Spleen - 1:26 23-24. Két dal Kisfaludy Sándor verseire / Two songs to poems by Sándor Kisfaludy - 5:38
11. Schumann módjára / In the manner of Schumann - 1:46
12. Két pad / Two benches - 4:46
13. Songs from the "Twelfth Night" by Shakespeare: No. 3 Come away - 2:04 28-34. Virágoskert / Flower garden - 9:45 35-41. Régi temető / Old cemetery - 4:07 42-45. Rosarium - 8:47 46-48. Három dal Shakespeare "Ahogy tetszik" című vígjátékából / Three songs from the "As you like it" by Shakespeare - 5:28

Total time: 76:14

Publishers

Released by Hungaroton (Fotexnet Kft.). © 2015 Fotexnet Kft. Distributed by Fotexnet Kft., 1126 Budapest, Nagy Jenő u. 12. Manufactured in the EU.

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