ZOLTAN KODÁLY                                 1882 - 1967

Dances of Galanta

On the road from Vienna to Budapest lies the small market town of Galánta, which Kodály knew well from his childhood; it was there that he heard his first gypsy band. Some forty or more years later he was to immortalise those memories in the 'Dances of Galánta', written to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Budapest Philharmonic Society.

The dances are based on authentic gypsy themes culled from a book of Hungarian dances published as early as 1800, and Kodály exploits his great skill as an orchestrator by dressing the somewhat primitive material in wonderful colours.

Though continuous, the work consists of five main sections that progress in pace from andante maestoso to allegro vivace, framed by a declamatory introduction and coda. Like the introduction, the first dance, ushered in by a clarinet cadenza, is melancholy in character, though with passionate outbursts: variants of it occur after the perky second dance (initiated by flute and piccolo) and after the rustic third (oboe, with delicate woodwind support).

 The syncopated fourth dance becomes extremely animated, but a gentler episode with an ostinato horn figure and new themes intervenes before the wild abandon of the final dance. This breaks off dramatically for a tranquil coda, in which the clarinet is again prominent, but the excited onrush is only briefly stemmed, and the work ends jubilantly.