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 S 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 n 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 VVaarrggaa..iinndddd ii 99//55//22001133 77::3311::3300 PPMM VVaarrggaa..iinndddd iiii 99//55//22001133 77::3311::4477 PPMM 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 VVaarrggaa..iinndddd iiiiii 99//55//22001133 77::3311::4477 PPMM 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. VVaarrggaa..iinndddd iivv 99//55//22001133 77::3311::4477 PPMM To my family: My brother, Peter My wife, Kati My daughters, Fanni and Flora And my grandson, Leon, born in 2012 VVaarrggaa..iinndddd vv 99//55//22001133 77::3311::4488 PPMM VVaarrggaa..iinndddd vvii 99//55//22001133 77::3311::4488 PPMM 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 VVaarrggaa..iinndddd vviiii 99//55//22001133 77::3311::4488 PPMM 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 VVaarrggaa..iinndddd vviiiiii 99//55//22001133 77::3311::4488 PPMM 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 VVaarrggaa..iinndddd iixx 99//55//22001133 77::3311::4488 PPMM