Top European award for Kiwi conductor
Prize for Hungarian choral work echoes powerful bond with country
Thirty-five years ago Hamilton musician Sarah Bisley took a train into a strange European world. She travelled from Hungary to Transylvania in Romania to visit the family of cellist Peter Szabo. They had met at the Weimar School of Music in East Germany.
At the time Hungary had one of the highest standards of living in Central and Eastern Europe while Romania had one of the worst. Bisley recalls Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania as a desperately poor but beautiful country.
“The secret police were everywhere; you never knew who was watching you.”
But between 1982 and Easter 1984, she made the return trip six times smuggling food and essentials from Hungary to her friends in Romania.
On one of those visits, she was asked by Peter’s father, Csaba Szabo, an ethnic Hungarian composer, to take back samples of his compositions for a former colleague, Professor Erzsebet Szonyi.
Three decades after she smuggled out those compositions, members of the Szabo family watched Bisley receive a rare distinction from the Hungarian government.
Now the musical and artistic director of Auckland-based Aorangi Symphony Orchestra and Aorangi Singers, Bisley is the first person in the Southern Hemisphere, and only the third maestro, to receive the Pro Cultura Hungarica.
Presented annually since 1985, the prize recognises foreign nationals who promote Hungarian culture and enrich cultural relations between Hungary and other countries.
Bisley received the award for her production of the choral work Psalmus Hungaricus composed by Zoltan Kodaly. He wrote it in 1923 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the unification of Buda and Pest, on either side of the Danube River, to form modern Budapest.
It was a rare performance of the music in New Zealand and the first time it had been sung here in Hungarian. She also arranged for Szonyi to perform at the 2015 concert at Q Theatre.
“Naturally, I was thrilled to receive the award but not only can I be proud, all of those who took part in the performance, including the children, can be, too. It’s an acknowledgement of what’s possible for New Zealanders to do.”
Performers included the Aorangi Singers and the Junior Choristers of Holy Trinity, who mastered Hungarian, and the Ensemble Polymnia [now known as the Aorangi Symphony Orchestra]. The production also featured tenor David Hamilton, organist Myles Hartley and narrator Raymond Hawthorne.
Bisley has returned to Hungary many times since the mid-1980s and it holds a special place in her heart.
She arrived in Budapest in 1982, after persuading Professor Laszlo Mezo to give her a place to study cello at the Ferenc Liszt Academy.
She learned Hungarian and began to organise “house gatherings” where musicians would get together to play for their friends.
“I thought that was a very European thing to do, but they were puzzled as to why I would organise small concerts in my flat,” says Bisley, whose family in Hamilton were all musical and often had similar gatherings at home.
The Aorangi Singers and Aorangi Symphony Orchestra perform Faure Requiem: Remembering Passchendaele 1917 later this year at St Matthew-in-the-City.