Ferenc Snetberger, music in memory of the Roma people

by time news

twelve o’clock, March 20 2021 – 21:25

In the album «HaIlgato» (Ecm New Series) the Hungarian guitarist and composer together with the Keller Quartett transfigures the Roman tradition in a very intense chamber atmosphere

of Fabrizio Versienti



Ferenc Snétberger is a Hungarian guitarist of Romani ethnicity; in a certain sense, the music of his people is an imprint that he carries with him from birth, enriched by the rich training course in the conservatory followed from the age of 13 onwards. Today, who is 64 years old and on his shoulders a rich wealth of experience in the classical, contemporary and jazz fields, we find him engaged in the double role of composer and performer in an album recorded in concert at the Liszt Academy in Budapest and published by Ecm New Series, «Hallgato». A word that indicates a genre of Roman folk songs. And here in fact the music tells. Without words, but in a touching and unequivocal way.

Fifty years after the end of the Holocaust

The first song on the program,«In Memory of My People», is a Snétberger concerto for guitar and orchestra dating back to 1995, rearranged in 2008 for guitar and string quintet. Here the same author plays it together with the prestigious Keller Quartett strengthened by double bass player Gyula Lázár. It is a work written for the 50th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust, of which the same ethnic Sinti and Roman gypsies were among the victims, like the Jews; but it is not the pain or the anger that dominate him but the memory and the whisper, a deep melancholy interrupted here and there by sudden ignitions. Like the following passage, theString Quartet No. 8 by Shostakovich, equally sad and absorbed, written for “the victims of fascism and war”. Two songs by Dowland follow in the rich program, theAdagio for stringsby Barber and two more songs by Snétberger: the delicate«Your Smile» for solo guitar and the “Rhapsody n. 1» for guitar and string quintet, where dance and party finally prevail.

March 20, 2021 | 21:25

© Time.News


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