児童合唱団のために作品を作ったことから音楽教育に興味を持ち、そのためにたくさんの合唱曲を残したコダーイ。子供たちに音楽を教える時には、まず歌うことを教えることから始めたといわれています。それだけ力を入れていた合唱作品だけに美しい響きの名曲ばかりです。指揮はハンガリーが誇る敏腕指揮者ファミリー、フィッシャー兄弟の兄アダム・フィッシャーです。
東京エムプラス

発売・販売元 提供資料 （2021/11/29）

Here's an enjoyable sampling of Zoltan Kodaly's unaccompanied choral music that touches both on pieces for children and those for a mixed adult choir. This is of considerable interest. Kodaly's ideas about music education grew out of his compositional activities, not the other way around, and the works for children's choir -- the first three on the disc -- bear family resemblances to the others, although they are certainly written at a more accessible level. Much of the music carries a combination, unique to Kodaly, of programmatic detail and quotation of folk song. Although the booklet notes attribute the comparative obscurity of Kodaly's music to the unfamiliarity of the Hungarian language, the compilers have not seen fit to include translations or even Hungarian texts. The booklet complicates things by using the Hungarian titles, which don't always match the ones appearing in the tracklist; King Ladislaus' Men -- or, Magyars and Germans appears in the notes, which explains the children's game on which the music is based, as Lengyel Laszlo. Nevertheless, there is enough in the booklet to let you get the drift of some of the pieces, and these are consistently lovely. The Aged (track 7) has an almost Bachian sweetness as it depicts serenity in the face of approaching death. Two of the works -- the children's Whitsuntide and the adult Matra Pictures -- are extended structures with an almost collage-like feel. Both choirs, under veteran Hungarian Haydn specialist Adam Fischer, are well-trained and sensitive; the MR Children's Choir is downright impressive. It's enough to make any listener, and especially any choir director, want to get to know this music better.

Rovi