Peter Eötvös: Cziffra Psodia (2020)

Peter Eötvös (1944-2024)
Cziffra Psodia, for piano and orchestra (2020)
00:00 I.
06:32 II.
15:01 III.
22:49 IV.
János Balázs, piano
Miklós Lukács, cimbalom
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande
Orchestre de la Haute école de musique de Genève
Peter Eötvös, conductor
Swiss Première, 06 April 2022, Festival Archipel '22
I gladly accepted the offer to write a piano concerto on the occasion of Georges Cziffra’s 100th birthday. My family had various personal connections to Georges Cziffra, and so I had the opportunity to get to know him when I was still a child.
In the 1930s, my mother studied piano with him at the Academy of Music in Budapest. After his unsuccessful attempt to leave the country in the early 1950s, he worked as a construction worker in a forced labour camp, where he ruined his hand. After his release, my mother helped him to get to play a piano again at “afternoon concerts” in small cafés. In 1956, he and his family left Hungary for good and settled in Senlis near Paris, where he founded the Cziffra Foundation for young artists. Later he also held summer courses in Hungary, organised by my wife.
Cziffra’s whole life was one of success and tragedy. It was rhapsodic and dramatic. This is precisely the atmosphere I have tried to create in my piano concerto. The characteristic metallic rhythm heard in the first movement is reminiscent of the work in the quarry during his imprisonment. The later meditative state of the moments of his withdrawal from the public has been composed in three quiet cadenzas.
The entire work is based on a small melody consisting of the letters of Cziffra’s name, with the pitches corresponding to the letters forming the characteristic chords and scales. The French version of Cziffra’s name was appropriate for this: G-e-(o)-r-g-e-s (g, e, d, g, e, e-flat) and C-z-(i)-f-f-r-a (c, c#, f, f, d, a).
The tempo of the piano concerto’s 4 movements is mainly based on the metronome marking of 100. An important element of the orchestration is the cimbalom, in remembrance of Cziffra’s father who played the instrument in cafés and even in Paris before the First World War.
Each movement ends with a short violin solo. This is a personal tribute to the memory of Georges Cziffra’s talent and his rhapsodic life.
Photo by Magali Dougados
Full Score
cutt.ly/PE_cziffra-psodia
Official Composer Website
www.eotvospeter.com/
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[@chuckallen6487]

uitstekend, Eötvös

[@kuang-licheng402]

nice

[@PalumboComposer]

neoclassic..romantic..

[@9827george]

and what do you think of it? I don't like the style of Eötvös nowadays.

[@PalumboComposer]

@@9827george I don't know what to think... it seems like a useless language to me, very rhythmically regular, harmonies like Bartok or Hindemith... very naive and useless

[@9827george]

@@PalumboComposer true, I couldn't have said it better!

[@galas062]

really????

[@galas062]

i like the fact is uses the orchestra, and does not give me small notes and silence all of the time....like composer today