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Written in fRoots issue 226, 2002

FERENC KISS
A Héttorony Hangjai - Sounds Of The Seven Towers
Etnofon ER-CD 036 (2001)

VARIOUS
Erdélyi És Moldvai Prímások - Musicians From Transylvania And Moldavia
Etnofon ED-CD 019 (2001)

VARIOUS
Hungarian Music From Transylvania - Traditions Of Gyimes And The Great Plain
Inedit W 260098 (2001)

TÜNDE IVÁNOVICS
Beli Buba
Periferic BGCD 081 (2001)

MAGYAR TEKERÖZENEKAR (THE HUNGARIAN HURDY-GURDY ORCHESTRA)
Vitézek Az Végeknél
Periferic BGCD 083 (2001)

DÜVÖ
Hungarian Village Music
Periferic BCGD 084 (2001)

Replete with the sounds and shapes of Hungarian traditional music, Sounds of the Seven Towers could be the soundtrack of a vivid, passionate film of medieval brigandry. Actually it’s a compilation of music made for what sounds like it must have been an impressive experience in the seven-towered Hungarian pavilion at 1992’s Seville Expo and for a number of more recent choreographic theatre shows by Ferenc Kiss, ethnomusicologist, Etnofon Records boss, leader of his performing group the Etnofon Music Company, member of the Odessa Klezmer Band and Kati Szvorak’s Stonemasons and ex-member of the bands Kolinda and Vízöntõ.
      With glimpsed images, overlapping singing and speaking voices, and deep clangorous sounds underlying traditional instruments, there’s a lot of atmosphere here, but it’s never vacuous; the works are built around complete and memorable songs and dance tunes, and there’s plenty of pace and energy. In the richness of textures it’s not always easy to figure out who’s doing what from the track credits, but among a varying cast including bagpipes, fiddles, cimbalom, saxophone and strong traditional-style vocals Kiss himself plays gutty koboz (lute), violin, Turkish clarinet, furulya, ütõgardon, jew’s harp, zither, hurdy-gurdy and percussion. A regular ally is very fine fiddler Zsigmond Lázár, sound engineer on some tracks, who also weaves synthesised sounds into the music so successfully the ear doesn’t distinguish and interface between them and the acoustic instruments. A commanding vocal in the opening piece is delivered by an un-named female singer; elsewhere there are characterful and beautiful vocal contributions from Tünde Rémi, Zsuzsa Vincze and Éva Auksz. Also notable among other delights is Tamás Gombai’s edgy fiddle in The Famed Town Of Szeged.

      Kiss has been collecting the traditional music of Hungary since 1972. He made the recordings that comprise Musicians From Transylvania And Moldavia in 1997 during the Primates’ Meeting held in Csíkszereda. The musicians, in groupings of from one to seven members variously using fiddles, violas, phono-fiddle, double-bass, shepherd’s pipe, kaval, cimbalom, koboz , zongura, ütõgardon and drum, come mainly from a swathe of villages across Hungary’s central belt from west to east and into Moldva. Despite the described poor condition of many of their instruments because of present economic circumstances, these are very skilful players of wonderful, exciting music and this is no “difficult”, scratchy archive recording.

      Some of the same players also feature on Traditions Of Gyimes And The Great Plain, released by Inedit under license from Hungary’s Fonó label which is in the process of making a collection, “The Last Hour”, of the extant traditional musics of the Carpathian basin. So far it has a thousand hours of recordings, and from them comes this set of recordings, made in 1997 and 2000, which feature two ensembles: septuagenarian singer Mária Maneszes solo and with the Gypsy taraf of the Transylvanian Plain village of Magyarszovát (two violins, two 3-stringed violas, double bass), and the duo of fiddler János Zerkula and ütõgardon player Regina Fikó, both also in their seventies from the ethnically Hungarian Csángós community of the Eastern Carpathian Tatros river valley in Gyimes.

      At the other end of the age scale, and more evidence of the way city-dwelling Hungarian musicians are seeking out and continuing the traditions not just by recording their elders but by performing and interpreting the material themselves, Tünde Ivánovics, a young singer currently studying ethnology at the University of Szeged, primarily focuses on material from the Hungarian traditions of Transylvania, particularly those of Mezöség, Kalotaszeg and her homeland of Dél-Alföld (the Southern Plain). Beli Buba opens with a short song from her as a child, then she proceeds, in a powerful, even voice, deep-pitched with that characteristic Hungarian vibrant edge and poise, with a set partly unaccompanied solo and partly accompanied by fiddles, viola and bass ensemble or by a single fiddle or ütõgardon.

      Also basing its repertoire on the Southern Plain traditions is the fourteen-member Hungarian Hurdy-Gurdy Orchestra, but the sound is considerably different from any of the foregoing. Nor is it the total wall-of-grind its name might suggest. Seven members do play hurdy-gurdy, but there are also harmonised vocals plus sax, clarinet, bagpipe, zither, flute, and drum, and with influences from church, classical and court musics their treatment and arrangements suggest renaissance or early music.

      Düvö is a Hungarian Gypsy four-piece stringband playing musics from throughout the Carpathian basin on scampering, astringent-toned fiddle and cimbalom over springy buzz-chugging driven-bow bass and viola, with occasional kobza, furulya, ütõgardon and rascally moustached male vocals, ending with a rowdy group song forsaking the strings for just soprano sax, drum and cymbal. In 1989 they were apparently awarded the title “Excellent Ensemble”, and OK, they still qualify.



© 2001 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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