Trans: Danube

Friday's festival evening will pay tribute to Pannonia and its musical expansions. We will touch the region in passing and enjoy some musical glimpses of folk music, which also fascinated many composers of this serious music. Two concerts of the evening, Danube in Gypsy, will indicate the extremes of Transpannonian music: firstly in a "highly distilled dose", as Mate Bekavac put it, and secondly in an authentic interpretation of the music of Roma virtuosos living in Hungary.

At a concert Danube the string players of the uncompromising Kelemen Quartet will join forces with the like-minded Bekavec and play compositions of two quite different classics. Bartók and Brahms both followed their own stylistic paths, contributing important works of chamber music, and both share a lifelong affection for the folk music of the Hungarian territory. Bartók knew the musical record of his homeland before his visit, so he easily internalized its elements and merged them with his original musical style. V String quartet no. 5 he also played with elements from other Danubian countries and in a scherzo, uneven Bulgarian rhythms were interwoven with melodies of Hungarian and Romanian character.

Brahms, who became familiar with Hungarian or Romani music at a young age, never renounced this idiom, even when composing for the most academically demanding audience. When he was about to retire as a composer, he was pulled out of creative resignation by a charismatic virtuoso on the clarinet, who could blow the wooden instrument so gently that Brahms immediately thought of the melancholy of his beloved Pannonian music. In his late Quintet with clarinet the strings and the clarinet blend warmly, and in the slow movement the composer treated the clarinetist to a large solo "gypsy" rhapsodic scene that warms the heart and dews the eyes.