From Boulanger to Stockhausen: Interviews and a Memoir

412 Pages·2013·4.404 MB·English

by  Bálint András Varga

F
r
B á l i n t A n d r á s V a r g a
o
Bálint András Varga has spent more “ Bálint Varga’s books have shown his devotion to the great composers of Bálint András Varga makes available here
m
than forty years working for and with com- contemporary music. The interviews in From Boulanger to Stockhausen, for the first time in English nineteen
posers. His previous books include György which he carried out over the past few decades, have today become an extended interviews with some of the
B
Kurtág: Three Interviews and Ligeti Homages important document for new generations of musicians and music lovers.” B OU L A NG E R most notable figures in music from the
and Three Questions for Sixty-Five Composers, —Riccardo Chailly, Gewandhauskapellmeister, O From past fifty years, as well as lively snip-
both published by the University of Roch- Gewandhausorchester Leipzig U pets from interviews Varga conducted
ester Press. L with thirteen other equally renowned
“ This is a book of voices. We hear great musicians speaking with fresh im- musicians. The interviewees include
A
mediacy, each of them introduced by a pen-portrait at once incisive and S t o c k h au s e n singers Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and
N
sympathetic. But we hear also the intimate voice of the one who observes to Cathy Berberian, pianists Alfred Brendel
Jacket image: Deep Blue by Caro Woods. Mixed media
on paper, 20 cm x 20 cm, 1998. http://www.carowoods and listens, the author of this astonishing book, in a moving memoir of a G and Arthur Rubinstein, violinists Isaac
.co.uk/. Caro Woods is an artist who lives and works childhood in communist Budapest and a working life promoting the music E Stern and Yehudi Menuhin, conductors
in Cornwall, UK. She has exhibited widely throughout he loves.” —Paul Griffiths, author of The Substance of Things Heard: R Claudio Abbado and Sir Neville Marriner,
Europe and Africa.
Writings about Music (URP 2005) composers György Ligeti and Karlheinz

t I n t e r v i e w s a n d a M e m o i r
Stockhausen, and legendary pedagogue
o
“ Bálint András Varga is one of the great listeners in the recent history of Nadia Boulanger. Of special interest is

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music. In his interviews with composers and musicians, in his work for an interview with the reclusive composer
t
Universal Edition, in his own writing, he waits for what matters and then György Kurtág, published here for the
o
pursues it, his attention his passion. Surging toward sound on every silent first time.
page, this book is a major document both of the century now past and of the c From Boulanger to Stockhausen
century unfolding.” —Alex Ross, music critic, The New Yorker k concludes with a poignant memoir by
Varga of his experiences growing up in a
h
“ This book has given me enormous pleasure. The interviews are full of Jewish family in Hungary during World
valuable information about music and musicians. Ligeti, Sir William Glock, a War II and the early years of Communist
and Walter Legge are no longer with us, yet here they are, speaking to us u rule. Varga’s recollections also include
directly. Bálint András Varga is a good listener and a perfect interviewer; he s details about his many interviews with
always asks the right questions. The autobiographical part of the book is—at e some of these remarkable musicians, and
least for me—no less fascinating. Jewish identity, life in postwar Budapest, about his employment at the Hungarian
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the world of publishers—Varga tells his story humbly, honestly, and not state radio station and then in the music-
without a sense of humor. He has helped me to remember my own not too publishing industry, which brought him
distant past.” —András Schiff, musician to, among other places, Vienna, where he
Varga
now lives.
668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620-2731, USA
P.O. Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
www.urpress.com
From B O U L A N G E R
to S T O C K H A U S E N
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B Á L I N T A N D R Á S V A R G A
From B O U L A N G E R
to S T O C K H A U S E N
I N T E R V I E W S A N D A M E M O I R
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Copyright © 2013 by Bálint András Varga
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no part of this
work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in
public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded, or reproduced in any form or
by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
First published 2013
University of Rochester Press
668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA
www.urpress.com
and Boydell & Brewer Limited
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suff olk IP12 3DF, UK
www.boydellandbrewer.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-58046-439-0
ISSN: 1071-9989
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Varga, Bálint András, author, interviewer.
From Boulanger to Stockhausen : interviews and a memoir / Bálint András
Varga.
pages cm — (Eastman studies in music, ISSN 1071-9989 ; v. 104)
ISBN 978-1-58046-439-0 (hardcover : alkaline paper) 1. Musicians—
Interviews. 2. Composers—Interviews. 3. Varga, Bálint András. 4. Music
publishers—Biography. I. Title. II. Series: Eastman studies in music ; v. 104.
ML385.V373 2013
780—dc23
2013019341
A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
Th is publication is printed on acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America.
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To my family:
My brother, Peter
My wife, Kati
My daughters, Fanni and Flora
And my grandson, Leon, born in 2012
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C O N T E N T S
Foreword by Arnold Whittall ix
Acknowledgments xi
Part One: Interviews
Preface to the Interviews 3
Composers
Georges Auric 9
Alois Hába 14
György Kurtág 19
György Ligeti 26
Karlheinz Stockhausen 58
Conductors
Ernest Bour 67
Sir Neville Marriner 76
Eugene Ormandy 89
Hans Swarowsky 99
Iván Fischer and Ádám Fischer 107
Instrumentalists
Alfred Brendel 119
Yehudi Menuhin 129
Isaac Stern 135
Tibor Varga 144
Singers and a Record Producer
Cathy Berberian 155
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Walter Legge 167
A Teacher
Nadia Boulanger 187
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viii CONTENTS
Music Administrators
Sir William Glock 199
Wolfgang Stresemann 215
Snippets
Claudio Abbado 231
Sir Neville Cardus 233
Aaron Copland 236
Antal Doráti 238
Géza Frid 241
Sylvia Goldstein 242
Ralph Kirkpatrick 247
Witold Lutosławski 251
Vlado Perlemuter 253
Arthur Rubinstein 255
György Sándor 257
Walter Susskind 260
Joseph Szigeti 262
Part Two: A Memoir
Introduction 267
Chapter 1 Ancestors 269
Chapter 2 On Being Jewish 274
Chapter 3 Growing Up in Postwar Socialist Hungary 278
Chapter 4 Margit 287
Chapter 5 Tapespondence 293
Chapter 6 Birth and Demise of a (Counter)revolution:
A Boy’s-Eye View 298
Chapter 7 Broadcasting 1 303
Chapter 8 Broadcasting 2 308
Chapter 9 Editio Musica Budapest 310
Chapter 10 Interviewing: An Obsession 324
Chapter 11 Ich war ein Berliner 328
Chapter 12 Moving to Vienna 336
Chapter 13 Universal Edition 342
Chapter 14 Back Catalogue 364
Chapter 15 Th e Psychology of Promotion 370
Chapter 16 Farewell and Aft er 375
Notes in Retrospect 379
Index 381
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F O R E W O R D
A ft er I’d fi nished reading Bálint András Varga’s text, I dug out the copy
of Schoenberg’s Sechs kleine Klavierstücke (Universal Edition, 1913)
that I’d bought as a schoolboy in 1953. At that distant time, the bold capi-
tals and wide spaces on the front cover and the seven challengingly com-
plex yet startlingly economical pages of music within stood for just about
everything that was not central to mid-century musical life and education
in my part of the world. Sadly, I failed to make it as a composer of music
worthy to follow on from Schoenberg (and therefore to be published by
Universal Edition), turning instead to academic, analytical exposition and
explanation. But the sense of awe and excitement that came from that par-
ticular purchase and from the process of learning to play and think about
those pieces has never diminished.
Such a frankly confessional tone is not normally the métier of the
musicologist, still less of the music theorist. But this book is both frankly
confessional and unusually illuminating about a musical life, in ways re-
freshingly diff erent from what academic musicology can off er. During its
author’s time—the second half of the twentieth century and fi rst part of the
twenty-fi rst—classical music has survived, despite the explosion of activity
and interest in various kinds of commercial, popular, and ethnic musics,
developed by artists who view creation and composition very diff erently
from the composers Schoenberg admired, or the composers he taught; yet
most of what has survived of classical music is to be found in concerts,
recordings, and scholarly studies that give pride of place to compositions
from earlier times.
Proclaiming the apparent immortality of Bach, Beethoven, and
others is an important and valuable enterprise, but it does rather tend
to marginalize and to highlight the ephemerality of those more recent
kinds of music, which have sought to transform and even on occasion to
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