László Borbély – Major Works by Franz Liszt (Live Concert Recording) (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 59:14 minutes | 1,81 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hunnia Records
Liszt is the greatest innovator of music history ever. Studying his works and performing them I always experience the boundless freedom with which I can approach them. This, of course, does not and cannot mean that Liszt should be played with all kinds of tasteless ‛exaggerations’. At the same time, it is a requirement for all performers to follow the intentions of the author and still present a new quality to the audience. The ‛vacuum’ between the printed and sounding music is a kind of ‛no-man’s-land’ which intrigues me as a pianist. Why? Because in this field we have no protection, that is, borderline cases and critical situations are constant. Even if my previous observation sounds exaggerated, I remind the listener that without this lack of insurance the artist’s approach is not worth a bean. Not only that, but art itself would be useless, irrespective of its genre. A composer who ignores trends dares to proceed forward from the fermented musical idiom, and offsets music history with a renewal of musical language devoid of ‛spleen’ or decadence. This was Liszt and this is what he still means for us.
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László Borbély, Savaria Symphony Orchestra & János Kovács – Concerto III for Piano and Orchestra (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 24:02 minutes | 865 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hunnia Records
For a pianist, Béla Bartók’s piano concertos are a central reserve of power. These works are worth the almost forty years that were spent wearing down the piano chair. These works are essential building blocks of ‘pianism’.
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Szabolcs Szilágyi & László Borbély – Parallel Lives – Works by Ernst von Dohnányi and Béla Bartók for flute and piano (2020/2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 53:07 minutes | 1,65 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hunnia Records
Listening to this album is a unique experience because the recording offers a selection of flute and piano pieces of two worldrenowned Hungarian composers: Béla Bartók (1881−1945) and Ernst von Dohnányi (1877−1960).
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Szabolcs Szilagyi & Laszlo Borbely – Bach, Complete Flute Sonatas, Volume I (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 46:18 minutes | 2,06 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hunnia Records
Bach’s flute sonatas are particularly sensitive, penetrating and soul-stirring music. If I had to use a single word to describe the four sonatas on this disc, surprisingly, I would have to use something far from idyllic. But why should Bach be so idyllic? His perfect structures (far beyond the ‘idyllic’ sound we imagine) remind us of the tragedy of our finitude and imperfection. And perfection never ‘anaesthetises’. With Bach, even the simplest-seeming music (or movement) explores the darkest spheres (along with the lightest, of course) that the human psyche can scarcely imagine. Just listen to the soaring, inducible phrases of the slow movement of the Sonata in C Major, over and over again. Like the stems of a plant spreading towards the light, tirelessly bursting forward, upwards, towards the surface, towards the light. If you listen to it once with deep attention, you will never forget the opening movement of the Sonata in E Minor, with its almost brutal phrasing, and then the fiery even movements that rush in as a counterpoint. But also the shifting moods of the A Major Sonata in the two outer movements, or the ‘heartbeats missing’ in the slow movement. In these Bach prophetically foreshadows the rebellious structures of modernity. And we haven’t even mentioned the second movement in the Sonata in E flat Major, which evokes the Passions…
So these pieces really do speak to us! They contain content that cannot be expressed in words, and beyond that, they ask the ultimate questions of our humanity, and they do it for us. Bach’s language hides for us the evidence of a time before the turmoil of Babel.
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László Borbély – J.S. Bach, Goldberg-Variationen, BWV 988 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:26:20 minutes | 2,78 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ondine
The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, is a musical composition for harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach, consisting of an aria and a set of 30 variations. First published in 1741, it is named after Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, who may also have been the first performer of the work.
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László Borbély – Olivier Messiaen: Catalogue d’oiseaux (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 02:32:08 minutes | 4,47 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hunnia Records
Everything is real. Olivier Messiaen’s piano cycle, Catalogue d’oiseaux (Catalogue of Birds), besides being one of the monumental creations of modern music, is one of the greatest ‘cathedrals’ among works ever composed for the piano (or any keyboard instrument).
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László Borbély – Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition, Balogh Reminiscences of an Exhibition (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 48:41 minutes | 1,92 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hunnia Records
“A few years ago I composed a large-scale piano piece for László Borbély, entitled Schmuÿle & Samuel Goldenberg. The piece refers to the movement of the same title from Mussorgsky’s well-known piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition. Mussorgsky depicts two Jewish figures of very different characters, the driving force of his work being the juxtaposition of musical material inspired by them. This is the only concept I myself have taken as a starting point: a personal, parlando rubato, declamatory musical material and a pronounced, decisive, energetic, chorale-like movement confronted with each other. My resulting piece is thus akin to the Mussorgsky piece through the programme in the background, through the institution of the ‘common ancestor’. In later years, it occurred to me to compose the other “Mussorgsky Pictures” accordingly, and to do so in pairs, by combining one Mussorgsky movement with another – starting from the musical conflict of my Schmuÿle movement. I have christened the series I have thus created “Memories of an Exhibition”.
I dedicated my cycle to László Borbély, one of the most outstanding pianists of our time.” Máté Balogh
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László Borbély, János Kovács, Savaria Symphony Orchestra – Béla Bartók: Concerto I. For Piano And Orchestra (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 23:18 minutes | 798 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hunnia Records
Laszlo Borbely tells us “For a pianist, Béla Bartók’s piano concertos are a central reserve of power. They are works that have been worth their weight in the piano stool for nearly forty years. These works are essential building blocks of ‘pianism’. To speak of Bartók, the composer (and thus this music), is an almost impossible undertaking. But why should I? Far more knowledgeable people than I have done it. What is the difficulty? Perhaps primarily because in his case, ‘great’, or ‘one of the greatest’, ‘greatest ever’,… categories all tend to dissipate.
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László Borbély – J. S. Bach: Die Kunst der Fuge, BWV 1080 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:32:49 minutes | 3,75 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hunnia Records
Borbely says “Why am I attracted to such ‘insurmountable peaks’ as Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge? I have always been captivated by researching complex musical structures and the regularities of music as language. Working on such a monumental and searchingly demanding work is challenging for me primarily because it is at this level that I can confront my own limits, my own “finiteness”. It becomes evident here that we, humans, can only aim at Perfection but will never be able to achieve it. This is the reason I never feel that my interpretation is “ready”. I would even abhor the idea. Why? Because one’s approach to a work will never be and can never be final. Bach’s music is also a continually forming, changing, infinite “game”, renewing itself again and again. Bach placed musical variability into divine invariability.
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Szabolcs Szilágyi, László Borbély – Prokofiev, Kodály, Liebermann & Kernis: Music For Flute And Piano (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 54:00 minutes | 1,88 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hunnia Records
“Whether it is necessary, or even right, to follow conventions (the beaten track) when recording music, for example, or whether the performer can claim the right to show the listener the world he lives in, the world he knows best, with all its beauty and its countless oddities, even risks? Should he let the listener into his own territory, that is, into a strange and individual dimension that the audience may not have known existed until now? Nowadays, a carefully crafted recording gives the listener the illusion of a world believed to be flawless, a care that is fundamentally designed to cater to the perfectionism of the audience. A ‘different’ kind of care is therefore needed, one that can breathe life into even a recording.
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