On the Spot – New Music A Zeneakadémia saját szervezésű programja

When in 1971 the Hungarian Radio launched a monumental concert series lasting for a full month from the quarter of a century production of Hungarian music composition, both József Ujfalussy and György Kroó emphasized the thought-provoking character of the retrospective, which recalled the then recent past. It beneficially refreshes our patchy memory “…if that section of the way in which we prefer to consider only the start and the end is revealed in its continuity,” wrote Ujfalussy. Even then a few works in the programme stood out, for example, the string orchestral Serenade, composed by Endre Szervánszky in 1947–48, was then considered by György Kroó to be a significant composition of the recent past. Concertino by Attila Bozay was created at a similar chronological distance to our present, that is, a quarter of a century ago. A Cage work of key significance, Cheap Imitation, is attuned to ineluctable questions – what relation should we have with this composition and what is the relation of the Bozay work with its own recent past? It is a work of art that examines the nature of musical memory as a central question. How far can we follow a work if only the rhythm reminds us of the piece (Erik Satie: Socrate) serving as a reference, and how can we orientate ourselves in the composition if we don’t know the model at all? And what is our ‘task’ when the music does not even demand that the listener exercises memory because it is settled in itself, as in the László Sáry work composed for string quartet?