Háry János Suite

The Battle and Defeat of Napoleon: alla marcia

Intermezzo: andante maestoso, ma con fuoco

Entrance of the Emperor and his Court: alla marcia

Neither Lieutenant Kijé nor Háry János could claim to be an unsung hero. The Russian officer didn’t actually exist and the Hungarian soldier’s heroic exploits in the Imperial Army are figments of his own extravagantly fanciful imagination - and yet, thanks to the inspiration of Prokofiev in the one case and that of Kodály in the other, they are two of the most celebrated military figures in musical history.

Kodály’s “Singspiel” Háry János (not so much an opera as a play with songs linked by spoken dialogue) was first performed at the Royal Opera House in Budapest in 1926. Successful though it was on that occasion, it has long been overshadowed by the immense popularity of the concert suite that Kodály drew from the score a year later. Beginning with an extraordinarily and almost unpleasantly vivid orchestral sneeze - issued as a warning that nothing to be heard hereafter should be taken at all seriously - the suite presents the best tunes and most colourful episodes of a whole evening’s entertainment in less than half an hour. In spite of the sneeze, however, we should believe that most of the melodies, including the heavily nostalgic one that arises from the bass to set the Hungarian scene as “the fairy tale begins,” are not folk songs but the composer’s own inventions.

“The Viennese Musical Clock” is János’s description of an astonishing device he sees when the admiring Empress takes him to the Imperial capital - a clock which parades miniature soldiers with their own trumpets and drums as it strikes the hour. For the sake of mechanical authenticity, strings are omitted here while woodwind and brass play the tunes alongside sweetly chiming bells, piano and celesta. In poetic contrast, “Song” is based on a genuine folk material which is used in the play for a duet for János and his village sweetheart Örsze, its romantic atmosphere much enhanced by cimbalom cadenzas and answering figurations on flute and clarinet.

“The Battle and Defeat of Napoleon” represents our hero’s single-handed defeat of none other than the great French general himself. A grotesque march with scary gestures on shrieking piccolos, wailing saxophone and whooping trumpets and trombones, it ends with a lugubrious funeral march for the vanquished dead. The “Intermezzo,” which is based on a real Hungarian gypsy verbunkos of the Napoleonic period, is not only well placed here but also most attractively characterised by its racy cimbalom obbligato in the outer sections and its elegantly poised horn melody in the middle.

The suite ends, appropriately, with another march, this one signalling the “Entrance of the Emperor and his Court.” Although strings are admitted here, it is scarcely more real than the march of the miniature soldiers in the second movement and, in spite of its increasingly brilliant colouring and developing grandeur, it is clearly as fanciful as any of János’s other military memoirs.