After the concert in Szentes, I made up my mind to go to the one in Szekszárd, even though the idea was a little over the top. It meant setting out at around 11:30 in the morning, taking the train to Budapest, then taking two more trains southwestward to Szekszárd, arriving around four in the afternoon; then, after the concert, taking four trains back and arriving in Szolnok around midnight. I justified this with two arguments: first, if I didn’t go, I would be left wishing I had; and second, I could work on the train (which proved true). It was the right decision.
Szekszárd is the birthplace of Mihály Babits. It is quiet, elegant, and wineful, among other things. I had never been there before, and I want to go back. I found the former synagogue, currently the House of the Arts, within minutes. This meant I had a little time to walk around. I did just that, then came in, said hi to Szolongo Száni, who manages the Budapest Festival Orchestra’s Community Weeks and whom I met back in 2017. What a joy to see her!
While the concert program was mostly like the one in Szentes (it differed by the encore), it had a different atmosphere. The acoustics were especially warm, whereas the hall felt more spacious. Each synagogue has its own acoustics and atmosphere, its own history and spirit; I can still remember the sound of the Albertirsa synagogue almost four years ago.
I am a bit tired—I got home at around one in the morning because of delayed trains, and then got up at 5:30 to get ready for an outing with my colleague and students. But this concert was joyous and great, and I am so glad to have gone.
After a concert like this, the world seems both smaller and larger: smaller because we came together for it, and larger because we saw and heard something new. I look forward to the next ones.
For more posts about the Budapest Festival Orchestra’s synagogue concerts,go here.
After all this time, we are so happy to come back together for concerts; by “we” I mean last night’s musicians and audience at the Budapest Festival Orchestra’s concert at the former Szentes synagogue, now the town library. Szentes is a beautiful town by the Tisza river in Csongrád county; I have only been there once before, to make a train transfer, but had never walked around until yesterday.
Jews have lived in Szentes at least since the mid-eighteenth century; a Jewish community was officially established in 1800. The synagogue was built in 1871. The community flourished, from what I can tell (though the detailed history is probably much more complicated), and contributed in numerous ways to the town. During World War II, Jews in Szentes were increasingly restricted by new laws, subjected to vandalism and violence, and then confined to a ghetto. In June 1944, they were sent in cattle cars to Szeged, and from there either to Auschwitz or to labor camps in Austria. Some survivors returned to Szentes; others left for Israel or America.
The Budapest Festival Orchestra began its synagogue concert series in 2014 with the goal of playing in every synagogue in Hungary and bringing life to these spaces through music. Some of them, like the one in Szentes, have been converted to libraries or cultural centers, some into stores or other buildings (the synagogue in Békés is now a pálinka distillery). A few still function as synagogues; still others have fallen into disrepair. They all, to different degrees and in different tones, evoke a way of life in which Jews and Christians lived side by side. Those days should not be idealized; they had their conflicts and troubles. The Holocaust did not occur in a void.
These concerts bring people together for the music and for the memory of the synagogue. Life and memory mix. These are joyous events; the musicians put all their heart into it. The first part of the program is not specifically Jewish in nature (last night, it was Donizetti’s Sinfonia for Winds in G minor and the first movement of Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet in B minor); the second part consists of rapturous klezmer. But you can feel continuity between the two parts, so in the music, too, different traditions, different livelinesses come together.
In the picture to the left, you can see Ákos Ács’s clarinet on a chair, and behind the chair, to the right, the synagogue’s Torah scroll in a case. It is open to the end of Parashat Beshallach and the beginning of Parashat Yitro–the transition between the Israelites’ escape from Egypt and God’s revelations at Mount Sinai.
This was the seventh synagogue concert that I had attended since 2017; the others were in Albertirsa, Baja (before I had moved to Hungary), Szeged, Békés, Gyula, and Mátészalka. Looking back, I remember that this concert series was part of what inspired me to come to Hungary. I had learned about it in some way or another and had written to the Budapest Festival Orchestra’s conductor, Ivan Fischer, to offer my support. I said that I would gladly help the orchestra with English-language proofreading (which I did for a while, maybe a year or so, until I got very busy in Hungary with teaching, translating, and more). Then, when I decided to come teach in Hungary, I planned a short visit to Hungary, my second, before the official start date. During this visit, I spent a day at Varga and also attended the Albertirsa and Baja concerts.
I love going again and again, to the extent possible: hearing some of the same pieces, some different ones, in different synagogues and towns, with different acoustics and angles of light, different exuberances and melancholies. I love hearing the introductions by Ákos Ács and the and the short lectures by the rabbis. Over time, I have understood more and more of the Hungarian; last night I understood almost everything, except that a few names escaped me, so I don’t know who the rabbi was and still don’t know who composed the klezmer pieces. But all of that in good time. I learned last night that at previous concerts, they have served kosher flódni afterwards, so I have had flódni without even realizing it!
The rabbi spoke of the Jewish traditions in Szentes: the Shabbat traditions, including the meal (which on Friday nights consisted of fish) and the drosé (the rabbi’s commentary on the Torah portion). He spoke of how not only Szentes but the entire region was overwhelmingly Neolog (the Hungarian Jewish movement, still predominant in Hungary, that broke away from Orthodox Judaism in the late nineteenth century out of a desire to modernize and assimilate somewhat). He pointed out architectural features that reflect this: for instance, in Orthodox synagogues, the bima, from which the Torah is read, is in the center of the room, whereas in Neolog synagogues it is in front, as you would find in Christian churches.
I have loved Rita Sovány’s and Ákos Ács’s musicianship from the start, but last night had moments where I felt the whole room’s jaw drop. In the Brahms, there was one particular exchange between cello and clarinet that I have to track down and listen to again. Throughout the concert, the ensembles brought this about; the music was filled with play and soul, with conversations that have no translation.
After the concert, I headed down the stairs and saw the beautiful arch of books under the archway; then walked outside and took a backward glance; then walked around Szentes for a while and stopped for a chicken burger dinner; then took the train back home. I thought this would be my only synagogue concert this spring, but now, if possible, I intend to go to the one in Szekszárd on Sunday. It’s a bit of a trip, and I am very busy with translating, but I can work on the train. That will be the last concert in this series until fall, and I have never been to Szekszárd, so everything in me says: go.
For more blog posts in the synagogue concertseries, go here.
Yesterday I was right up against the line. To get to Mátészalka in time for the Budapest Festival Orchestra’s synagogue concert, I would have to catch the 1:38 train, transfer in Debrecen, and arrive there at 5. The concert started at 6 and was supposed to last about an hour. So if it ended at 7, I might be able to make it back to the train station by 7:15 and catch the last train that would get me back to Szolnok before midnight (the following train, in fact, would get me back at 4 a.m.). The whole thing was so unlikely that I thought, close to the last minute, “Maybe I should just stay home.” But then I headed out the door (on the late side), pedaled with all my might to the train station, locked up my bike, and caught the train. (I caught the return train too.)
Sometimes you know that something is important and that you need to be there. Sometimes you don’t. In this case I knew. But I didn’t know why, except that I hadn’t been able to attend a synagogue concert in a year. Last fall, they were all too far away; by “too far” I mean that I would have had no way of getting out there or of returning to work on time the following day. Last spring, they were cancelled because of the pandemic. But there was more to it than the long wait. I love this synagogue concert series, which the Budapest Festival Orchestra started in 2014 with the goal of playing in every synagogue in Hungary–for free, for the local communities. Shortly before moving to Hungary, in September 2017, I attended the concerts in Albertirsa and Baja. After moving here, I attended the ones in Szeged, Békés, and Gyula. This was to be my sixth.
As you ride from Debrecen to Mátészalka (the farthest east I have ever traveled in Hungary), you start to enter a different Hungary. Thick forests, sequestered towns, a large Roma population. Once I arrived in Mátészalka, the walk to the synagogue was easy: one road for a stretch, than another. And then I saw the synagogue itself and gasped.
The sun was hitting the building in dapples, through the trees. People stood outside, waiting for the concert. Kids zipped up and down the quiet street on their bicycles and scooters. And nearby was the Szatmári Museum, two churches, and other elegant buildings. You can imagine a time when Jews and Christians lived, worked, and worshipped side by side; the street preserves the feeling. That in turn reveals a Hungarian wound.
The audience members wore masks. (The hall filled up much more than the early picture at the top suggests.) The concert, in terms of program, followed a familiar format: an introduction, a piece, a short presentation by a rabbi, the rest of the official part of the program, and the encores. A local community leader would also speak about the town.
All of this took place. The official program consisted of Jean Françaix‘s Wind Quartet and the second movement of Max Bruch’s string octet in B. Then there were two klezmer pieces at the end–a slower piece that evokes a familiar “Nishmat” melody, and a livelier piece with clarinet at the center.
But this concert was different from all the others that I have attended so far, maybe because so much was familiar that I could notice other things. The light was like threads of gold. The sound rested in the air. I saw that the musicians were playing out of love and out of the knowledge that this had to be done. Like my traveling out there, in a way.
Most of the musicians I have heard before, in previous synagogue concerts and other concerts. Rita Sovány’s cello, Ákos Ács’s clarinet had a joy to them. You don’t even touch a thing like that. What do you say about it? My words fall this way and that.
The music ended at 7. There was another short speech, but I slipped out and ran as fast as I could for the station. I stopped for a split second to take a picture of the town hall.
I made it to the train station just in time, got on the train, and took a picture through the window somewhere along the way, as the sun folded past the ground.
Yesterday we had an outdoor faculty meeting in preparation for the school year, which begins on September 1. The principal began by welcoming us back “with fondness and respect” (“szeretettel és tisztelettel”). This common Hungarian phrase has no equivalent in English; it set a nice tone for the morning. The head of the school district said a few words, a number of teachers were recognized for excellent work in the previous year, we discussed some aspects of the school year (more meetings are ahead), and we went over fire and other emergency procedures.
Today I went in for a meeting with the arts faculty. Since I include drama and music in my teaching and have two big drama projects lined up for this year, I was welcomed into the “munkaközösség,” a faculty working group. It was great to be part of the discussion and hear about plans, concerns, needs, and so on. The arts at Varga are rich, and now the school’s second building, Building B, will be devoted to the arts. The drama room will have a stage; it will become a little auditorium!
I am essentially entering my fourth year at Varga (and my fourteenth full year of teaching), hard as that is to believe. I say “essentially” because I started at the beginning of November 2017–so it has been three years minus two months. But still, given that I jumped right in, it’s fair to say that this is my fourth year. So my students who were in ninth grade when I arrived will be graduating this year.
We will have classes in person but will take certain precautions and prepare to adjust plans if necessary. The country will respond locally to the situation–so if one part of the country is harder hit, it will have stricter regulations than areas with few coronavirus cases. It will be a while before life in Budapest returns to normal, it seems, though small events are happening again, and university students are returning for hybrid instruction. Here in Szolnok, in contrast, the situation seems stable and safe right now.
I have missed Varga, classes, students, and colleagues. It is a wonderful place to teach–a dream school, as far as I am concerned–and I have been thinking about why. I will say more about that another time. This afternoon I am about to take the train out to Mátészalka for one of the Budapest Festival Orchestra’s synagogue concerts. I wasn’t able to attend any last fall, because they were all too far away; the last of their synagogue concerts that I attended was in Gyula, in September 2018. This one’s a bit far too, but feasible, if I head out in the next few minutes.
My laptop is still in repairs (I should get it back tomorrow), so I am writing on the phone. To make this easier, I wrote a draft on paper first, a good idea in general. The pen is a kind of mediator, the typewriter too. The electronic keyboard somehow shirks this role. Moreover, the pen and typewriter are messy in an enjoyable way. You get to cross things out, squeeze things in.
First of all, congratulations to everyone who took part in the Hamlet performance—three scenes and discussion—at the Verseghy Ferenc Könyvtár on Friday! I was sitting next to Katalin Cserfalvi, who works at the library and made this event possible. At moments we gaped at each other in awe. These scenes came alive, not only in the actors’ expressions and gestures, but in their rendition of the language. Last year’s performance was full of spirit and enjoyment, but this year’s reached a new level.
This took long and intense work. We have been rehearsing for about two months (mostly in class, and not in every class session), but before that, we read the entire play and then reread a few scenes multiple times. The students who weren’t in the performance—who served as audience members during our classtime rehearsals—deserve commendation too, because without their attention, listening, and comments, not only would we have been unable to rehearse, but we would have missed some of their insights. Also, the two students who introduced each scene at the performance, Luca Regina Gazdag and Dorina Kata Nagy, helped out in numerous ways behind the scenes, as did Petra Rónafalvi, who provided some of the costumes. When putting on a play, even a few scenes, one becomes aware of the different kinds of work that go into it and the importance of each.
After Hamlet, I went upstairs to hear a performance by Zsolt Bajnai and Marcell Bajnai (father and son): stories and songs alternating in a kind of dialogue. There seemed to be connections between Zsolt Bajnai’s stories and Marcell Bajnai’s songs; while not explicit or obvious (to me), they brought the separate works togethet into something new. I didn’t understand everything—some songs were familiar, some not, and I had read just one of the stories, the wonderfully satirical “Korrupcióterápia,” but I loved the different tones and the atmosphere of enjoyment in the room. Next time, whenever that may be, I will understand much more. (I didn’t take pictures, but there should be some coming from the library soon; when they appear, I will add the link.)
One exciting thing: the last song that Marcell played was one I hadn’t heard before. I was so taken by it that I tried to find it online later (by looking up the few words and phrases that I remembered). I had no luck, so I wrote to him to ask about it. He replied that he had written the song a week before and that this was the first time he played it in public! I now realize that he said this when introducing the song, but I didn’t catch it at the time. I hope to listen to the song many times.
All of this would have been enough for me for a weekend, but the festivities continued at full tilt. Yesterday, late in the afternoon, after a quiet day at home, I took the teain to the nearby village of Zagyvarékas for the Margaréta folkdance festival, followed by a concert by the band Csík. One of my students, an accomplished folk dancer and a member of the Rákóczi dance group, was in three of the dance performances—and I was eager to see them all and hear the band. It was my first real folkdance event in Hungary. I have seen a few short performances here and there, but nothing like this. I eas moved not only by the dancets’ skill (in singing as well as dancing), not only by the colorful costumes, not only by the gorgeous rhythms and melodies, but by the vitality and “nowness” of it all. Folkdance in Hungary is not some relic of a dying tradition; people of many ages put their hearts and lives into it.
What to say about the Csík concert? It was fantastic; they played so many instruments, and combined musical styles with such ease and in such interesting ways, that I wanted to rush home and start playing too. Their music opens up possibilities. The audience adored them (except for one disgruntled drunk man on the sidelines who ranted in a few brief sputters about how he wanted pure Hungarian music, not music from all over the place). Many songs were the band’s own, others by others; many had folk motifs, while others had a jazz, blues, rock, or other feel, or a mixture. One song (by Gábor Presser) I had heard before; Marcell Bajnai had played it in his recent solo concert, at the very end. It was exciting to recognize it and hear it in these two different ways.
Mosquitoes were swarming all around—it has been a bad few weeks, mosquito-wise—and audience and musicians alike were getting bitten every split second, from every angle. But we stayed until the end and beyond, cheered for an encore (which they played), and kept on applauding after that.
It was a long journey home (but a pleasant one, except for the mosquitoes). I had made the uncharacteristic mistake of leaving my bike at the Szolnok train station (or rather, train stop), thinking that the Zagyvarékas train station would be near the village center. Wrong! They are about four kilometers apart; in fact, you have to leave Zagyvarékas and then enter it again. The walk didn’t feel long, but on the way back I just barely missed the train I had hoped to take and had to wait an hour for the next one. Lesson learned: bring the bringa!*
P.S. On top of it all, this evening I went to Pest for the Budapest Festival Orchestra’s annual Dancing on the Square event, which brings Roma and non-Roma, economically advantaged and disadvantaged children together from all over Hungary to dance to music played by the orchestra. This year, the BFO played Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7; in the final movement, the children performed a dance. This Beethoven symphony, and especially the outdoor performance, brought back strong memories of playing it in high school, at Tanglewood—the thick summer air, the feeling of being in the middle of the music, all of this came back—but the performance made me hear the work in a new way. It is hard to describe, but I have it in my ears. The dancing worked so well with the fourth movenent, the children danced with such glee, that it turned into something more than I can name, something that goes with the rest of the weekend. We do not have to hold back in music, stories, poems, dance, plays. So much is waiting to be created, performed, and heard. So much is already here, in the air, on stages, in books and notebooks, in the feet and hands, in the mind. The train back to Szolnok has stopped, the window is open, and I hear the loud wind in the leaves. They are there too, the songs..
Fall is here at last! Goodbye, for now, to the heat and pounding rays; a hearty welcome to the chill and vigor. I love walking and biking around in the fall: listening to the leaves, watching the trees sway, taking in the pale colors. I also just completed one of the greatest challenges of my life: leading services for the High Holy Days, along with the rabbi. (I led the musical parts; she led the spoken parts.) I spent weeks preparing daily; it went beautifully, and I learned profoundly.
I was so tired afterward, and so overwhelmed with upcoming projects and deadlines, that I thought I would have to give up one of two events this weekend. I had planned to go to a Budapest Festival Orchestra concert on Friday–a Baltic program, featuring works by Čiurlionis, Pärt, and Vasks–and then to the Season Opening Gala, a benefit event for the orchestra’s “Choose Your Instrument” program, which gives children around Hungary the opportunity to do just that. I thought I would have to give up the gala–but then, with a little encouragement, I decided to go.
The Friday night concert was beyond anything I had expected, since Arvo Pärt himself was there! I was first introduced to his work in my senior year of college; at the time, I listened to Tabula Rasa over and over. I slowly became acquainted with some of his other compositions, including Te Deum, which the BFO performed Friday night. His music is so otherworldly that I didn’t initially imagine flesh-and-bones mortals playing it, let alone composing it–so it was astonishing to see everyone together, composer and musicians, in the hall. In this photo, he appears all the way to the left, with a bouquet of flowers; at this point, we had been applauding for so long that he signaled that it was time for sleep.
The concert program consisted of Te Deum (the final piece), Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis’s Miške (In the Forest), Pärt’s Como cierva sedienta, and Pēteris Vasks’s Epifonia. (The soprano Sylvia Schwartz was the soloist for Como cierva sedienta; the Cantemus Mixed Choir sang Te Deum.)
I stayed overnight in Budapest, went back to Szolnok in the morning, and then returned to Budapest two hours later for the Gala event. I also had to return to my previous hotel to pick up a book of poetry I had left there. (It was intact.) So now I start to wend my way into the topic at hand: beginnerhood, about which I have written before.
During the reception before dinner, we were all invited to try out instruments; members of the Budapest Festival Orchestra and several children demonstrated the instruments and allowed people to give them a try. (I tried the tuba, horn, flute, and violin; later, during the dinner, I tried another horn and the harp as well.) It was thrilling to be a beginner: to have no expectations except for that starting point, the first note or few notes, however they might sound. But there was more to it than that. As Iván Fischer explained to us later that evening, not everyone is suited to every instrument. Different instruments make different demands of a person; some require an earlier start than others, some favor particular physiques, some have particular logistical requirements, and some get fallen in love with. When children understand this, they have a better chance of selecting an instrument that is right for them.
When you choose an instrument, you do not necessarily sign on for life. I spoke with BFO members who had started with one instrument and then switched to another, who had taken breaks from playing, who had not begun their instrument until their teenage years, or who had studied something else at the university. The paths to musicianship–even toward the highest levels–are not as standardized as people may assume, but no matter when and where these musicians began, they have been devoted to their instruments for years. This cannot be shortchanged. Trying an instrument, you grasp all over again what it would take to learn to play it well. But basic proficiency is just another layer of beginning, amid more layers and layers.
In that sense, beginnerhood and mastery do not cancel each other out; a master still has chances, at any moment, to play a familiar piece in a fresh way, to play in new situations and formats, and to treat the bare beginners kindly. The evening was full of generosity: musicians giving encouragement and suggestions as guests tried to play clear notes (or any at all), sounds ringing out all over the room, lively and lovely performances over the course of the evening, good fundraising, and conversation in many languages.
In speaking of a spirit of beginnerhood, I do not mean that “everyone is a beginner” or that freshness is everything. Years of practice and repetition allow one to inhabit music, language, or another field; without such dedication over time, a person would stay trapped within the “sort of” (which to me is a sort of hell). But repetition and habit are only part of the work, though an unforsakeable part; musicians, writers, artists, actors must also meet the art anew and anew, with everything they have, with empty hands.
Speaking of that, I have some work that is barely begun, with rapidly approaching deadlines–so it is time to buckle down and overcome this particular beginnerhood, knowing that others and other kinds will follow.
I made a few minor chances to this piece after posting it.
I first learned about the Budapest Festival Orchestra’s synagogue concert series before I even knew about the possibility of teaching in Hungary. I wanted to support it and hoped one day to attend one of these concerts. Yesterday I made it to my fifth–but just barely!
To get to the concert in Gyula (a town in southeastern Hungary, near the Romanian border), I needed to take the 3:34 train out of Szolnok. The next train would get me there too late. My last class ended at 3:20, and I would need another minute or two to get out the door and on the bike; biking fast, I could possibly make it to the station in ten minutes, but much depended on the timing of the traffic lights. Just one long red light, and I would miss the train.
In addition, there was no way to return to Szolnok that night; I would need to stay in Gyula and return the next morning on the earliest train, the one that departed at 4:59. (The next one would get me to school too late.) So I reserved a hotel room in advance, not knowing whether I would make it to the concert in the first place.
After my last class on Wednesday, I rushed out the door, got on my bike, and pedaled with everything in me. I cut one corner: on bike, you are not supposed to cross Szapáry Street right at Kossuth Lajos Street but are instead directed to cross halfway up the next block. That would have taken too long, so I crossed right there, along with the traffic, then re-entered the bike path and sped onwards. I got to the train just in time; it left about a minute after I boarded with the bike. The transfer in Békéscsaba went without a hitch, and I arrived in Gyula exactly on time, at 5:07. (The concert started at 5:30.)
I had a basic idea of how to get there but wasn’t completely sure I was doing it right. I passed through a park where some teenagers were sitting and smoking. They saw me pass by and immediately sensed that I was looking for something; when I explained, three of them came to my aid and explained the directions, telling me to turn left and cross a bridge. I turned left but saw no bridge; I asked a woman on a bike how to get there, and she said she was going in the same direction and would show me. Soon we crossed that bridge and were there: at the Ferenc Erkel Music School, formerly a synagogue. I entered and took my seat early.
The program was new for me (until the encores): Max Bruch’s string octet in B-flat major and Claude-Paul Taffanel’s wind quintet in G minor. The Bruch allowed me to delight in Rita Sovány’s cello playing and the conversation of all the instruments.
The Taffanel was full of Bach influence, but with Romantic dreaminess and flute (played gloriously by Anett Jóföldi). In its evocation and transformation of a past, it suggested some of the meaning of the evening, as did the Bruch. I was caught up in it from start to finish.
There was a triple klezmer encore, with the full ensemble; two of the pieces I knew from previous concerts, and one was new to me. We the audience listened with hush and clapped with noise.
The full hall, the sounds that seize, the traditions coming together, the musicians’ gifts, the audience’s warmth, and my own joy in being there made this an evening not only of beauty but of urgency. The evening does not translate into a political message; that is part of the point. All the same, it “asks a little of us here.”
The magnificent clarinetist Ákos Ács–who leads the synagogue series–spoke at several points, clarinet and microphone in hand. A delightful rabbi–whom I heard speak once before, at the concert in Szeged last June–spoke about Jewish synagogues. Hungarian is not his native language; I enjoyed the sense of searching in his speech. Another man spoke at length about the history of Jews in Gyula, and then the head of the music school said some concluding words.
The audience seemed profoundly involved; afterward, people lingered and left slowly.
Then came the clouds and downpour. I made it to the hotel without confusion; I just began riding and found it. I took this picture right at the corner.
The hotel had a restaurant, so I had some delicious fish soup and then went to sleep. I left at 4:40 in the morning and got to the train station five minutes later.
I hope to visit this town again for a longer stretch. But this quick trip was so full and unlikely that it continues onward in my mind.
You can read my posts about the synagogue concerts in Albertirsa, Baja, Szeged, and Békés here, here, and here.
I made a few edits to this piece after posting it.
On Sunday the rabbi and I went to the glorious Dancing on the Square, performed by the Budapest Festival Orchestra–with special guests on cymbalom and violin–and schoolchildren, Roma and non-Roma, from all over Hungary. The seating area outside Saint Stephen’s Basilica was packed; the performance filled the air with good things, from music to tolerance to joy. There will be an online broadcast tomorrow at 6:30 p.m. Central European Summer time (12:30 p.m. EST); it will be available over the following two days.
I decided, close to the last minute, to spend the night in Budpest (at the wonderful Baross Hotel) and then, in the morning, take a day trip to Subotica, Serbia. It all worked out–a long day, but worthwhile down to the second.
Staying at the Baross (where I stayed last September, during my preparatory visit to Hungary) allowed me to ride the glass elevator.
The train ride to Subotica took four hours; about 30 minutes were spent at the border, where “border police” boarded to check passports. I had to show my residence permit as well (because it was clear that I had been in Hungary for a while); once I showed it, the officers had no more questions.
Subotica is unlike any border city I have visited before. Not only are street signs in several languages (Serbia, Croatian, Hungarian, English), but you sense the old presence of Serbian and Hungarian cultures. Bunjevci were once a majority here. In many ways Subotica looks like a Hungarian city–but the Secessionist (Art Nouveau) architecture is especially prominent and colorful. Overall the city showed crumbling elegance: shady parks, towering churches, long terraces of cafes and shops, a famous theater, and some falling apart here and there.
I wanted to see the synagogue (which reopened in March, after a detailed restoration); having no map, I walked around in circles for a couple of hours before overhearing a couple heading to the tourist information office. I walked along with them, benefited from their sense of direction (they found the office), and received a map. From here I found the way.
The synagogue, designed in the 1890s and built in 1902, is one of the great Art Nouveau monuments of Subotica. Outside, the Holocaust memorial reads, in five languages, “In memory of 4000 Jewish citizens with whom we lived and built Subotica. They perished in the fascist death camps during the World War II. — Citizens of Subotica, July 10, 1994.”
After this, I headed back to the train station; the trip home took seven hours, since it involved going back to Budapest and heading from there, on a different train, to Szolnok. In the later part of the trip, the wind and mist rolled through the windows; the train grew emptier, and I thought back slowly on the day.
The synagogue concerts in Szeged and Békés keep breaking past my phrases; they will not be held back by summaries. Since its inauguration in 2014, the Budapest Festival Orchestra’s synagogue project has brought music to one synagogue after another, in cities, towns, and villages across Hungary–synagogues that once thrived but that were laid bare by the Holocaust. Fiona Maddocks writes:
One is now a table-tennis hall, another a furniture warehouse. A third has been ransacked, all the windows broken, birds flying in and out during the concert. In many cases the locals had never seen inside. The doors of one had not been unlocked since last closing, during the German occupation.
By bringing music to these places, the orchestra not only revives their memory but brings people together, in the present, for something beautiful. I attended two synagogue concerts in September and two this week; as I attend more, I not only love them more, but come to understand their meanings.
Every seat was filled. It all went by too quickly, but I remember the acoustics in Szeged, where every texture could be heard, and the intimate sound in Békés (where even those in the back row were just a few meters away from the musicians).
They played the first movement of Schubert’s Octet in F Major (D803), the first movement of Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-Flat Major (Opus 20)–for four violins, two violas, and two cellos–and and Glazunov’s Rêverie orientale (which, as the clarinetist Ákos Ács commented in his introduction, has something of a klezmer feel). I think back on the subtle tones and changes of the Schubert; the cellos in the Mendelssohn; the dialogue between cello and clarinet, and then viola and clarinet, in the Glazunov; and then the laughing, crying, dancing, shrieking klezmer music that took us to the end.
Between the pieces, a rabbi (a different one each time) spoke about synagogues in general and about the history of Jews in the particular place. In Szeged, someone else spoke as well–perhaps the person in charge of the performance space. Then Ákos Ács led the exhilarating klezmer encores–one encore in Szeged, two in Békés. He then invited us all to stay for cake; people lingered and talked and then slowly went their different ways.
The Szeged synagogue is now a performance space; the Békés synagogue, a plum pálinka center. Each place shows its loss: the first through its bareness and the second through its refurbishment. Upstairs in the pálinka center, the bar counter has two menorahs (you can see one of them in the photo above); are they always there, or were they put there in honor of the concert? A few minutes in these places, and you can get overwhelmed; the history is so difficult that even the brave might walk away.
These concerts make it possible to sit still here, or somewhat still–to sit with some knowledge of what happened, but more than knowledge alone. The music does something to us; we live through something together and know it when we look around afterward. We are no longer separated. Maybe we will be tomorrow, but we will still remember being here. We will remember the musicians’ gifts to us.
I biked through beautiful Békés, stopping when I saw or heard something I couldn’t ignore: the river, farmhouses, the sunset. Here’s a chicken strutting across a roof, with farm sounds in the background.
And here is a field–not a bad end to the day.
I later learned that for the first movement of the Octet, Schubert adapted a theme from his lied “Der Wanderer” (whose words are from a poem by Georg Philipp Schmidt von Lübeck). I had to listen to both compositions several times to figure out which theme this was, but think I found it at last. In the first movement of the Octet, it is the main theme of the Allegro. In “Der Wanderer,” it is the piano part during these lyrics:
Wo bist du, mein geliebtes Land?
Gesucht, geahnt, und nie gekannt!
Das Land, das Land so hoffnungsgrün,
Das Land, wo meine Rosen blühn.
Where are you, my beloved land?
Sought for, dreamed of, but never known!
The land, the land, so green of hope,
The land where my roses bloom.
So even the bike ride was not remote from the music.
Tonight, with time and a keyboard, I will say something about the Budapest Festival Orchestra concerts in Szeged and Békés. The trip to Békés could not have gone better; as I had planned, I took the bike on the train to Békéscsaba—a colorful little city in southeastern Hungary—and then found a bike path that transported me to Békés. Sweeping me through groves and fields, it landed me in the center; I wended my way to the synagogue—now the town’s Szilvapálinka Centrum—and arrived about ten minutes early. The photo above is from the ride back to Békéscsaba; the one below, from the ride to Békés. The music cannot be summed up in a flash; “glorious” and “moving” won’t do, although they are true. I look forward to looking for better words later today.
Since November 2017, she has been teaching English, American civilization, and British civilization at the Varga Katalin Gimnázium in Szolnok, Hungary. From 2011 to 2016, she helped shape and teach the philosophy program at Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science & Engineering in New York City. In 2014, she and her students founded the philosophy journal CONTRARIWISE, which now has international participation and readership. In 2020, at the Varga Katalin Gimnázium, she and her students released the first issue of the online literary journal Folyosó.
On this blog, Take Away the Takeaway, I discuss literature, music, education, and other things. Some of the pieces are satirical and assigned (for clarity) to the satire category.
When I revise a piece substantially after posting it, I note this at the end. Minor corrections (e.g., of punctuation and spelling) may go unannounced.
Speaking of imperfection, my other blog, Megfogalmazások, abounds with imperfect Hungarian.
I am essentially entering my fourth year at Varga (and my fourteenth full year of teaching), hard as that is to believe. I say “essentially” because I started at the beginning of November 2017–so it has been three years minus two months. But still, given that I jumped right in, it’s fair to say that this is my fourth year. So my students who were in ninth grade when I arrived will be graduating this year.
Take Away the Takeaway 