Eloquence Classics

Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók were Hungary’s two most important composers in the 20th century. They were both friends and colleagues, working separately and together to document and preserve folk music from Hungary and its surrounding regions. The music they collected strongly influenced their own compositions. Decca was one of the first major record companies to invest in recordings of the choral music of Kodály. Perhaps spurred by the success of István Kertész’s recording of ‘Psalmus Hungaricus’, they continued to record a number of the composer’s choral works under the direction of László Heltay. All of these recordings are collected over a double-CD, coupled with Bartók’s ‘Cantata Profana’, one of Sir Georg Solti’s last recordings, for which he provides very moving commentary in the booklet.