Frigyes Hidas, Attila Bozay, Lang István, Emil Petrovics

condition (record/cover): NM / EX

The wind quintet - flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon - is one of the defining chamber forms of the twentieth century, its five distinct timbres offering a range of blending and contrast that has attracted composers across every aesthetic tendency. In Hungary, the form had its own specific trajectory, running from Béla Bartók's interest in folk-inflected wind writing through the post-war generation's engagement with the European avant-garde. This Hungaroton LP from the mid-1970s presents four quintets by composers who represent the range of that post-war generation, all performed by the Hungarian Wind Quintet.

Frigyes Hidas (1928-2007) was the most prolific wind composer among them - three quintets, multiple concertos, an enormous output for brass. His Wind Quintet No. 2, Lo Svago (The Diversion) is true to its title: five short movements, each with a distinct character, the language tonal but modern. Attila Bozay's Quintet Op. 6, one of his most-performed works, moves between neo-classical clarity and a more searching chromaticism; it was among the pieces that first brought Bozay international notice in the late 1960s. István Láng's Quintet No. 2, Transfigurazioni - the title echoing Szőllősy's orchestral work of the same year - takes the most explicitly avant-garde approach of the four. Emil Petrovics's quintet completes the set with the most theatrically inclined writing on the disc, Petrovics being primarily an opera composer whose chamber works carry the same sense of dramatic shape.

An essential document of the Hungaroton Contemporary Hungarian Music series. Original pressing.