In 2009 won Valentina Tóth (1994) als vijftienjarige de eerste prijs van het Prinses Christina Pianoconcours. Challenge wilde gelijk met haar een album opnemen. Valentina – die aan het Koninklijk Conservatorium studeert – kiest drie jaar later voor een programma met Hongaarse muziek. Hiermee eert ze haar Hongaarse grootvader en geeft ze invulling aan haar geboeidheid voor de tempi en expressie van deze muziek. De veertien bagatelles en drie Hongaarse volksliederen (Bartók) en de zeven pianostukken en de Marosszéki dansen (Kodály) zijn gebaseerd op het veldonderzoek van de componisten. Tóth weet met haar uitstekend spel goed met de emotionele en impulsieve muziek van Bartók en Kodály om te gaan. Er valt nog veel moois van haar te verwachten.
Kodály/Bartók - Hungarian Horizon
Valentina Tóth (piano)
Bartók:
14 Bagatelles (Tizennégy bagatell zongorára), Sz.38 op. 6
3 Hungarian Folksongs from Csík (Három csíkmegyei népdal), Sz.35a
Kodály:
Seven piano pieces (Hét zongoradarab) op. 11
Dances of Marosszék (Marosszéki táncok)
Information
“Music is a language everyone understands. When you communicate through music, there are no misunderstandings, there is no confusion.” That could be the artistic motto of Valentina Tóth (18) – a young and highly promising pianist, a multi-talent who sings, dances, acts and plays the piano at an exceptionally high level. In 2009 she won first prize in the Princess Christina Piano Competition and her career has been on the up and up ever since. Skyrocketing. She is currently studying at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, but already she has been on the stage at Carnegie Hall, and April 2013 Challenge Classics released her first album.
For her first album Valentina Tóth decided to do her favourite repertoire: Bartók and Kodály. A musical coming home. And take that coming home quite literally, because Valentina is three-eighths Hungarian and five-eighths Dutch; she grew up in a house opposite the church in a village in Friesland. “A long time ago, my grandfather left Hungary and came to the Netherlands to study law and theology. In my parents’ house I often heard Hungarian folk music. I thought it was something truly special. I was fascinated by the different tempo, the different expression in that music. I think that is how I became so very attached to the work of Bartók and Kodály. Hungarian music is emotional and impulsive. Just like the Hungarians. I see that in my father, but a bit in myself too. That music feels so very familiar. It’s hard to explain why I play it the way I do. I want to play it the way I feel it.”
The Bagatelles, Op. 6, written in 1908, are an important link in the work of Bartók. In them it first become clear how hard the composer was working to find his own super-personalised musical language. The work dates from the time when Bartók seriously started to collect and document Hungarian folk music. Bartók was able to take something that had been around ages (Hungarian folk music) and make something entirely new out of it.
Tóth combines the Bagatelles and the Three Folk Songs from Csík (now Ciuc in Romania) by Bartók with the Seven Piano Pieces, Op. 11, and the Dances of Marosszék by Kodály. Kodály based the latter work on melodies and dances he had collected in the Marosszék region in Transsylvania, Romania. He originally wrote this fairy-tale-like music – nowadays seldom heard in the concert hall – for piano, and later adapted it for orchestra.
