Farkas: 'Hungarian Dances' (flute & piano).

Описание:    • willie-whistleblower  

Farkas' sparkling Hungarian Dances in the version for flute and piano.

Born into a musical family (his father played the cimbalom and his mother played the piano), Ferenc Farkas (1905-2000) began his musical studies in Budapest, at the Protestant Gymnasium and later attended the Music Academy, where he studied composition with Leó Weiner and Albert Siklós.

After his graduation in 1927, he worked as a repetiteur and conductor at the Municipal Theatre of Budapest and collaborated with the Diaghilev Ballet. From 1929 to 1931, he attended Ottorino Respighi's masterclass at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. The years he spent in Rome had a decisive influence on him. He became acquainted with Italian and Mediterranean culture to which he felt a deep attraction. About this he said: "My principal aim has always been to attain for myself a latin clarity and proportion.".

Farkas returned to Budapest in the autumn of 1931. As he could not find any other assignments, he played the piano in various theatre orchestras. In 1932 he met the director Paul Fejos for whom he composed several film scores, first in Hungary, then in Vienna and Copenhagen. This collaboration was to be for Farkas the beginning of an impressive series of “applied” music (music for around 75 films and 44 theatre plays and radio plays).

In the spring of 1934 he conducted research of his own into traditional Hungarian music by collecting folk songs in Somogy County: "When I got back from my travels abroad, it became clear to me that the work and research of Bartók and Kodály raised crucial problems that we as Hungarians, had to resolve ourselves. ".[1]

From 1935 he taught at the Budapest City Music School. From 1941 to 1944 he was professor of composition and director at the Conservatory of Kolozsvár (today in Romania) and he conducted the city's Opera Chorus. At the end of 1944, because of the war, he had to flee to Budapest, where he worked as the deputy conductor of the Royal Opera Chorus during the siege of the city.

In 1946, he was sent to Székesfehérvár where he founded and managed the Conservatory. He was nominated professor of composition at the Franz Liszt Music Academy of Budapest in 1949, a post he held until his retirement in 1975. As a professor he was to have his greatest influence in the second half of the century. Among his students were: György Kurtág, György Ligeti, László Kalmár, and Miklós Kocsár.
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Hungary and the European Union:
It has been proposed that Hungary withdraw from the European Union (EU). In Hungary, a member of the EU since 2004, right-wing populist politicians have tried to create a comparison between the EU and the former Soviet Union (USSR), seen as a past oppressor in the country. Furthermore, democratic backsliding is a phenomenon present in Hungary. For this and other reasons, it has been suggested that Hungary should leave the EU.

'Other reasons' are not hard to find: all the 27 EU nations are now 'under the cosh' because, starting 31/8/2022, Russia has completely halted its Nord Stream 1 gas supplies to Europe. Hungary's Viktor Orban has immediately called for an increase of 5.8 million cubic metres of gas per day to Hungary. A spokesman for MR Scholz's Social Democrat Party felt the EU should not 'lean' on Hungary who, after all have no viable alternative supply and are backing EU sanctions against Mr Putin's Russia to the hilt.

In 2021, the Parliament of Hungary promulgated the so-called Hungarian anti-LGBT law, which aims to ban all media content for children that may be considered as "promoting homosexuality"--the law implies that a relationship exists between the LGBT community and pedophilia. This received a strong negative response from other countries of the EU, with Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte even suggesting to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán that Hungary should leave the EU.

In parenthesis, Hungary is legally allowed to leave the EU by Article 50 of the European Union Treaty. According to this Article, the country could leave the union following a referendum, which would necessitate changing the Constitution of Hungary following a vote of two-thirds of the Hungarian parliament. Exactly this was proposed by the Hungarian politician Dóra Dúró, member of the party called 'Our Homeland Movement'. However, withdrawal from the EU is not popular among the Hungarian public. A 2016 poll revealed that 68% of Hungarians wanted to stay in the EU and that only 17% preferred to leave. In 2020, support for the EU was even higher, with 85% of polled Hungarians supporting the country's continued membership of the union.