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Hungarian Jazz at the Naval Museum

By John Shakespeare Dyson | January 28, 2025

On December 15 I attended a jazz concert by Hungarian musicians at the Beşiktaş Naval Museum. The performers were the pianist and song-writer Peter Sárik (the group’s leader), double-bass player Tibor Fonay and drummer Attila Galfi, the trio’s speciality being jazzed-up versions of classical pieces. Actually, that isn’t quite as dire as it sounds. The results of their ‘improvements’, far from being hideous distortions of the pieces concerned, are actually quite tasteful, and (in my view, at least) not at all disrespectful to the original composers. A successful jazz piece needs to have good rhythm, of course, and those composers (such as Bach) who are especially strong in this department lend themselves naturally to jazz treatment. The fact that Bach sounds good when interpreted in this way (or in any other, for that matter) was amply demonstrated in the 1960s and 70s by the French musician Jacques Loussier (1934-2019), famous for his trio’s album Bach’s Goldberg Variations, as well as by the Swingle Singers, a group founded in Paris by Ward Swingle in 1962 and subsequently re-founded by him as the ‘New Swingle Singers’ in the UK in 1973.

Peter Sárik graduated from the Franz Liszt Music Academy in Budapest in 1997 following four years of training in classical music. Since then he has become one of his country’s most popular jazz pianists, having formed his trio in 2007. His speciality is jazzy transcriptions of Bartók and Beethoven. In 2021, for instance, he produced a jazz version of Bartók’s 1917 opera Bluebeard’s Castle, a work known in Hungarian as A kékszakállú herceg vára. Peter Sárik is also a songwriter who regularly wins prizes in song competitions in the USA and Great Britain.

At the beginning of the proceedings Mr Sárik announced, firstly, that this was his ensemble’s fourth visit to Istanbul, and secondly, that the works they were about to play were different from the ones listed on the concert programme. I found this encouraging rather than otherwise, as an element of spontaneity is always welcome in a jazz environment. Nevertheless, I recognised quite a few of the pieces they actually played.

There were, for instance, some of Bartók’s Romanian Dances, during the course of which I enjoyed a long double-bass solo (I took the group’s willingness to allow the double bass – never the most popular solo instrument in a jazz group – to take centre stage in the very first number, as a sign of musical maturity). The unbuttoned and not a little manic Sabre Dance from Khachaturian’s Gayane Suite No 3 – here, the development to which the main theme was subjected produced some interesting excursions; a tongue-in-cheek version of the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite in which the unfortunate fairy was put through some novel contortions to the accompaniment of skittish note clusters from the piano; a somewhat irreverent but nonetheless pleasing version of Summer from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons in hip-swinging bossa nova rhythm, played so fast that the pianist’s hands became a blur; and a rousing Hungarian knees-up dance that had the audience clapping in time and swaying in their seats. 

What impressed me most of all, however, was the tasteful and entirely musically appropriate renditions of two slow pieces – Chopin’s Prelude in E minor (Opus 28, No 4) and a melody from one of Bach’s vocal works that I have been unable to identify. It was not the cantata aria that was advertised in the programme notes. in hindsight, I surmise that it may have been the insanely beautiful Erbarme dich, mein Gott from his St Matthew Passion. That one had me and my companion in tears.

Here are some examples of the Peter Sárik Trio in action. First, some mainstream jazz – an energetic cover version of Jamiroquai’s Virtual Insanity featuring Budapest-born vocalist Myrtill Micheller.

Next, one of Mr Sárik’s own compositions – Do You Remember. To my mind, the accompaniment in the left hand shows how strongly he has been influenced by Bartók’s characteristic leaning towards atonality without actually getting there.

Lastly, a blast of Bartók – two versions of Bot tánc (‘Stick Dance’), from his Romanian Dances. The first is a studio recording, while the second is a live performance at the Atatürk Cultural Centre in 2022; it features the Turkish violinist Nedim Nalbantoğlu.

 

At the concert on December 15 the Peter Sárik Trio communicated their evident pleasure in making music to the audience, and for that I am grateful not only to them, but also to whatever gods, planets and classical composers had agreed to let their hair down on that day. Magyarország (as the Hungarians call their country (hint: you don’t pronounce the first g) has done us proud in Istanbul recently, and although I remain totally perplexed by their language, I nevertheless appreciate the serious concern they have for high-quality musical performance. So Köszönöm to the Hungarian Cultural Centre in Istanbul for bringing so many fine musicians to entertain us during the Hungarian-Turkish Year of Culture, launched to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

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