It might seem odd that during his long career, Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály wrote only nine works for orchestra. When someone asked him about this, he replied, “I was busy with more important work: I had to educate a public.”
Kodály and his countryman Béla Bartók were pioneers in the collection and study of Hungarian folk music, and, on top of that, his lifelong concern was to instill this rich heritage into the Hungarian people through an extensive and innovative program of musical education.
So successful was Kodály that even outside Hungary, the so-called “Kodály method” has been adapted for music education worldwide. Given his tireless educational efforts, it’s surprising he had any time or energy left for composing at all. For example, his started writing a symphony in the 1930s at the request of Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini.
The Symphony finally received its premiere decades later at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland on today’s date in 1961, and by that time Toscanini had been dead for several years. Even so, Kodály did not forget the original request for the work, and dedicated his only Symphony to the memory of the great conductor.
In fact, Toscanini was also responsible for the creation of one of Kodály’s most popular orchestral works: it was at Toscanini’s prompting that Kodály orchestrated his Marosszék Dances, a set of folk tunes he had originally arranged for solo piano.
Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967): Symphony and Dances of Marosszék; BBC Philharmonic; Yan Pascal Tortelier, conductor; Chandos 9811