Zoltán
Fekete was not a specific Remington artist in the sense that Kurt
Wöss, H. Arthur Brown, Joseph Messner, or later Thor Johnson
was.
In 1950 producer Marcel Prawy asked Viennese conductor Bernard Paumgartner
to make recordings for Remington and as a bait Prawy mentions the
contract he obtained with the Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg which
was eventually conducted by Joseph Messner. However, Prawy did not
mention the name of Zoltan Fekete, the Hungarian conductor who conducted
the Mozarteum but whose biography remains an obscurity.
Information about
Zoltán Fekete is very scarce, in fact it is practically
nonexistent. Encyclopedias do not mention the man. Grove's does not
have an entry on Fekete. And liner notes on the LP releases often
merely mentions his name and only in two cases one or two facts which
may allude to an existing biography, but does not exist. On the Remington
cover of Bruckner's Symphony No. 3 on R-199-138 are just a
few lines which indicate that Zoltán Fekete came to the US,
appearantly just before World War II, and that he must have obtained
American citizenship: "(This) American-Hungarian conductor first
penetrated the musical consciousness of New York through a series
of concerts with the Midtown and New York City orchestras." After
the war he returned to Vienna as on the back of the cover of Colosseum
CLPS 1012 with Suites arranged and conducted by Zoltán
Fekete a short annotation from the hand of Wanda C. Von Rudolph-Ronty
says:
Zoltán Fekete to whom we are indebted for the suites
presented here, conducted this performance with the Vienna State
Symphony Orchestra. A Hungarian by birth his musical education
includes study in the Budapest Academy of Music and in Vienna.
Mr. Fekete has devoted a great deal of research to the final
period of Handel's creations. In his arrangements he has kept
faithfully to the original melodies and harmonies, transposing
them into forms which are easiliy understandable today. Mr.
Fekete is also a composer, one of his compositions on another
Colosseum record is his "Caucasus Ballet Suite" (CLPS
1011). Other numbers conducted by him are : "Snow White
Ballet Suite" (CLPS 1011), and the "Grand Duo Opus
140" arranged by Fritz Oeser as the "Gastein Symphony"
(CLPS 1013) also Bartok's early work (1905) - First Orchestra
Suite, opus 3 (CLPS 1010).
|
|
|
|
Zoltán Fekete is arranger of Mozart's Fantasy, of Suites
by Handel, he conducted works by Bartók, Bruckner, Mahler
and Tchaikovsky, and is the composer of Caucasus Ballet Suite
and Snow White Ballet Suite.
|
Zoltán Fekete was born on July 25th, 1909, in Budapest,
Hungary. He studied with Zoltán Kodály and Béla
Bartók in Budapest and later in Vienna. The recordings
of Zoltán Fekete are not many. They have been released in various
countries on different record labels. In general reviewers were not
always appreciative of his conducting and in any case not happy with
the sound of the recordings. Some of Fekete's performances show that
he certainly had the needed authority to lead an orchestra in an inspiring
way. He surely did not have the wish to build a career solely as a
conductor forcing him to lead performances of an extensive repertory
with many different styles, if he had been asked. He was the man who
preferred to appear from time to time in front of an orchestra, would
arrange works from others and would compose orchestral scores of his
own ideas. How many works he wrote in total is not known. Also the
exact date he passed away is not found. But Teri Noel Towe told me
that Fekete died in the late 1970s. He was living in Munich. His wife
was Alma Hoehn, the legendary dealer in collectors' 78s and LPs. She
died around 1988.
Zoltán
Fekete's Remington recordings:
R-149-2
- Elisabeth Wysor in Contralto Arias: Mozart, Meyerbeer, Verdi,
Wagner - The Vienna Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Zoltán
Fekete. It was originally released by Don Gabor on Continental CLP
1002 in 1950 (Songs of the Great Masters). It also became available
on Halo 50312 in 1957.
R-149-25
- Mozart: Music To "Thamos, Koenig in Aegypten",
Austrian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Zoltán Fekete, coupled
with Finlandia (Sibelius) conducted by Kurt Wöss.
R-199-2
- Mozart: Fantasia in F Minor KV 608 (arr. Fekete) - The Vienna
Symphony Orchestra conducted by Zoltán Fekete, coupled with
Symphony No. 1 (Schubert) conducted by Kurt Wöss.
Click here
for a Sound Clip of Tchaikovsky's Tempest.
R-199-55
- Tchaikovsky: Tempest (symphonic fantasia, Op. 18, The Storm)
- Vienna Symphony Orchestra conducted by Zoltán Fekete, coupled
with Le Coq d'Or (Rimsky-Korsakov) conducted by George Singer.
R-199-55 was first released in the winter of 1951/1952. The recording
was also released by Gabor on the Etude label (ref. 706; again
coupled with Le Coq d'Or).
In April of 1955 the recording of The Tempest was issued in Great
Britain on Concert Artist LPA 1022, but here coupled with Fekete's
own composition 'Caucasus Ballet Suite'. Although a Concert Artist
release, reviewer R.F. exactly described the Remington-like sound
character and the quality of the performance of this recording in
the April 1955 issue of then 'The' Gramophone (see the excellent
Archive
of Gramophone):
The performance is reasonably good, though lacking in precision
of attack, but the balance of the instruments is not satisfactory.
There is no mellowness about the string tone—and after
all they are Viennese violins and cannot really sound like this.
The microphone, presumably too close, is picking up too much
from too few desks, and the result is edgy tone with some distortion
on climaxes.
On the other side there is a piece by the conductor who is not
known by Grove or any other book of reference that I can find.
Readers will notice that he has been doing a lot of recording
in Vienna lately. According to the sleeve he is a Hungarian
who has lived in America since just before the war. Had I not
been told, I would have guessed that his Caucasus was the work
of a pupil of Rimski-Korsakov writing in the 1890's. It seems
to me to be quite without merit.
|
You may disagree somewhat - as I do - with the reviewer's qualification
of the performance as being "reasonably good". It suffice
to listen to the - indeed badly recorded - but exhilarating performance
on the Remington disc. The harsh string tone can certainly be corrected
somewhat. But it is clear that Fekete is in full command of the orchestra
and the players show that they really can cope with the virtuoso passages
of the storm building up and raging. Noteworthy is the brass section
of the Orchestra of the Viennese Symphonic Society. It is not a polished
recording, that's for sure, yet Fekete's is a strong and captivating
performance and reminds one of the suspense generated by the sound
track of an old 1950's B-movie, indicating the important influence
of European, Eastern European and Russian artists and musicians in
Hollywood at the time.
R-199-138
- Bruckner: Symphony no. 3 (1889 ver., pub. Rättig 1890)
- Zoltán Fekete, Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra (1950).
From 1950 on this
recording had been available on Concert Hall CHS 1065. In the
beginning of 1954 Concert Hall CHS 1065 was no longer available and
had been deleted from the Schwann Long Playing Record Catalog. The
reason was that Concert Hall themselves had recorded a Bruckner
Third with Walter Goehr conducting The Netherlands Philharmonic
Orchestra which was released on Concert Hall CHS 1195.
From then on the original recording of Fekete's performance from 1950
became available on Remington R-199-138. It is definitely not
a Remington MUSIRAMA recording as is suggested by cover and label.
In Great Britain the Fekete recording was released on Concert Artist
LPA 1018. It also appeared on Qualiton LP HLPX 1047.
A curiosity is
Concerteum CR 326 on which Zoltán Fekete conducts "Orchestral
Suite" (Suite d'orchestre, Op. 3) by Béla Bartók.
Although the Bartok Suite recording appeared on Concerteum with the
specific Remington prefix CR, the Suite never appeared on Remington
but was released on Colosseum CLPS 1010 in the US. A
release on Remington was maybe planned but did not go through. It
cpould as well be that this recording was mastered in the Webster
plant. See:
Remington releases on Concerteum.
Zoltán
Fekete on other labels:
Zoltán
Fekete: "Caucasus Ballet Suite" Colosseum CLPS 1011.
(April 1955)
Zoltán
Fekete: "Snow White Ballet Suite" Colosseum CLPS 1011.
Hector Berlioz:
Le corsair, Prague Symphony Orchestra - Supraphon SUG 20371
Hector Berlioz:
Le Corsaire, Benvenuto Cellini.
Vincent d'Indy: La mort de Wallenstein, Istar.
Prague Symphony Orchestra - Supraphon SUA ST 50735. Issued as a Crossroad
release in the USA. Prague Symphony Orchestra conducted by Zoltan
Fekete.
Franz Schubert:
Gastein Symphony (orchestration by Fritz Oeser of Schubert's Grand
Duo Opus 140, now known as Symphony No. 9 (The Great) D 944. Colosseum
CLPS 1013.
Béla
Bartok: Suite for Orchestras No. 1, opus 3 - Colosseum CLPS 1010.
Concerteum CR 326. (1955)
Gustav Mahler:
- Das Klagende Lied.
Ilona Steingruber (Soprano), Sieglinde Wagner (Contralto) and Ernst
Majkut (Tenor). Vienna State Opera Orchestra, conductor Zoltan Fekete.
Mercury 10102.
In Great Britain this recording was not released as a Mercury but
was issued on the Concert Artist label in April 1955.
Georg Friederich Handel: Jephta Suite No. I , arranged by
Zoltan Fekete. Joseph Haydn: Symphony in C major No. 88. Salzburg
Mozarteurn Orchestra conducted by Zoltan Fekete. Mercury 10071.
Timothy Mather
Spelman: The Vigil of Venus. Ilona Steingrunber (Soprano), Otto
Wiener (Baritone), Vienna Academy Choir conducted by Ferdinand Grossman,
The Vienna State Opera Orchestra conducted by Zoltan Fekete. MGM E3085.
(1955)
Georg Friedrick
Handel: Alceste Suite and Festival Suite (areranged by Zoltan
Fekete). Vienna State Operta Orchestra conducted by Zoltan Fekete.
Colosseum CLPS 1012.
Jules Massenet:
Werther, excerpts. Geori Boué (Soprano), Barnay Marti (Tenor).
Orchestra conducted by Zoltan Fekete. Orphée 51082 E (France).
Later issued on Vogue LDM 30130.
Rudolf A. Bruil.
Page first published on March 29, 2009
|
