Eugene Zádor, 2020

Track Listing

Zádor: Tarantella – Scherzo 8:34

 

Zádor: Music for Clarinet and Strings 13:47

1. Andantino – Allegro 4:50
2. Molto moderato – Allegretto scherzando 3:40
3. Alla zingaresca 5:16
   

Zádor: Trombone Concerto 14:12

1. Moderato 4:06
2. Allegretto 5:12
   
3. Dance 4:48

 

Zádor: In Memoriam 5:47

 

Zádor: Sinfonia Technica 27:42

1. The Bridge (Allegro moderato) 8:04
2. The Telegraph Pole (Andante) 6:00
3. Water Works: Scherzo (Allegro) 5:30
4. Factory (Andante – Allegro) 7:53
   

Reviews

“This is the sixth volume in Naxos’s survey of the Hungarian composer, Eugene Zador, who fled from his native country at the onset of the Second World War.

“The American musicologist, David Ewan, who had known him, wrote, ‘it probably never occurred to him that he was old fashioned, or behind the times, and if it ever did occur to him, it did not bother him overtly’. This disc finds him in various locations and in very different financial circumstances, the earliest, the Sinfonia Technica, from 1931, being the ‘odd-ball’ from his years in Vienna, when he took a rare excursion into a musical view of the industry that surrounded him expressed in music of its era. By the time of the vivacious Tarantella we find him in Los Angles in 1942, having left New York, his first home in the States, as he could not make a living there. Now he had found employment orchestrating scores for the film industry, for which he was never credited. The person for whom he wrote In Memoriam in 1962, is unknown though it was probably for his mother and father who had perished in the German occupation of Hungary. By 1966 good fortune was smiling on him in every way, and he was now a parent, and in demand in films and the concert hall. One project he set himself was to compose ‘concertos’ for the ‘undervalued’ instruments of the orchestra, and that included the three movements of the Trombone Concerto. Four years later he turned his attention to the woodwind with the Music for Clarinet and Strings here played by Pal Solyomi the principal of the Budapest Symphony Orchestra. The portfolio of compositions, outside of film scores, is enormous, and includes works in every classical guise, including several operas and a vast number of orchestral scores. There had been bad times for him, but during his lifetime—he died aged 83—his music was performed by the world’s most famous conductors and orchestras. Presently rather in the doldrums, I hope this series corrects that situation. The Budapest Symphony, directed by Polish conductor, Mariusz Smolij, play as if their lives depended on it. The sound quality is superb.”
—David Denton, David’s Review Corner