De profundis… from the depths of the galactic permafrost to the heights of the quantum cosmic ether of the 21st century, three Hungarian composers cooked up their own amusing musical reflections on planet Earth’s sonic history.
This was the second time that the Danubia Orchestra, and its maestro Máté Hámori, proposed this challenge to local composers – this time featuring brand-new works by Gergely Vajda, Judit Varga, and Marcell Dargay. The performances (all conducted by Vajda) of the three blazingly inspired orchestral works took place at the Liszt Academy on April 27th. It was a wild ride, and one that might never occur again.
Vajda’s own piece: “Komoly elmélkedés a végtelen örökkévalóságról” (Serious Reflection on Endless Eternity) placed listeners’ ears on a vast vibratory terrain from an ostensible Year Zero to Johann Sebastian Bach’s era. It began with a deep drone tone that remained throughout as a constant, even as it changed octaves via various instruments. It effectively painted a multiverse of earth rumbles, wind and fire that spewed forth tribal rituals featuring the tootling of ancient Indian flutes and clattering of actual donkey skulls.
Using ancient Greek songs carved on tombs and a touch of Hildegard von Bingen’s ephemeral chants, Vajda suggested, through the harp’s crystalline scalar tones, the arrival of the mysteries of the Medieval era. Bach chorales intoned by the brass section followed, punctuated slightly with dissonant voices and contrasting rhythms, rather like a Charles Ives moment. The collective long exhale at the end was the sole sound of the contra-bassoon’s deepest note, which put us back into the ‘tabula rasa’ it started with.
Varga’s kaleidoscopic time travel begins where Vajda left off — from Bach, then cruising through the myriad musical genres that had emerged throughout several centuries, up to the 20th. Her “2002 in 20 – Mashup Pompeux et Méchanique” was a circus of many musical references using snippets from one composer after the next. Actually, it was fun trying to recognize each one. Her energetic journey through 200 years in 20 minutes connected pieces from Haydn to Richard Strauss that cleverly slid from one composer’s phrase to the next, as if a crazed film editor had patched scenes together like a crazy-quilt.
The French language in the title evoked seductive bits of Debussy, but then slid headlong into Dante’s inferno via Verdi’s blood-curdling “Dies Irae,” which migrated into Wagner’s underworld, which led to the glorious horn section bellowing the triumphant end of a Mahler symphony. Electronics magnified the final climactic chord that shook the house.
Dargay’s “XXLP – A Tribute Album” was a seven-part suite, each section with novel titles using clever puns and famous names, starting in Paris in the early 20th century, hurtling through decades of Hollywood’s film music industry, then to Warsaw and Northern Europe’s avant-garde, to the final “Deus ex Machina.” Imagined as a two-CD set of seven songs dedicated to his own 20th century, Dargay’s suite comically melded Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” high bassoon opening with Edith Piaf’s “La vie en rose”– 1913 being the pivotal point in breaking up the fusty Old World mold.
Dargay’s conflation of Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” with present US politics became a hilarious Fanfare for the Confused Common Man, and Richard Strauss’ “Thus spake Zarathustra” shape-shifted into a Hitchcockian version of Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” theme with the help of electronics. More tomfoolery ensued with the use of household objects as percussion instruments (a large rubber hose, plastic water bottles, et al.), bubbling woodwinds, crashing chords, police whistles, disco machines, and the orchestra musicians’ voices chanting parts of “Bluebeard’s Castle.” The chaotic pastiche’s last section (Deus ex Machina) ended with what so many sci-fi films have predicted: a long, sustained atmospheric and dystopian sequence of mobile phone beeps and electronic hiss. God’s hand had finally reached down to extinguish mankind’s static.
I’d like to point out that this concert was sold-out; I mention this because a similar contemporary music concert presented in the US would be only half-full, at best. Budapest’s wonderfully sophisticated audiences, evidently, are happy to support their living musical heroes – one of whom is Maestro Vajda, whose expertise on this evening was amply evident. And, importantly, kudos to the Danubia Orchestra for their prowess under his baton in these unusual works.