Patrick Bade
Cultural Overview of Budapest, Part 2

Patrick Bade - Cultural Overview of Budapest, Part 2

- Somebody was asking me at the end of last week, why it is that there are not so many famous Hungarian artists and writers? Well, with the writers, unless they wrote in German, like Franz Werfel. Hungarian is, of course, a little bit of an impediment to international recognition. And as far as the painters are concerned, I don’t know why they’re not better known. There are wonderful, wonderful Hungarian painters in the early modern period. And anybody who’s been to Budapest and been to the National Gallery of Hungary, which has the national collection of Hungarian painting, will know how many good Hungarian painters there are. Well, the man you see on the screen, he’s called Mihai Munkachi, and he might also not be particularly familiar to you, but he was world famous at the end of the 19th century. This is his studio in Paris, very palatial. And he was a kind of painter prince. He was seen as the successor of Hans Makart, who had a rather similar studio, over the top studio in Vienna. And he died relatively young. He actually contracted syphilis and died in 1900. He was so famous that he was given a state funeral. This is perhaps his most famous picture. I don’t know it could be familiar to you, I suppose it was very much reproduced. And it’s called “The Last Day of the Condemned Man.” So it’s a storytelling picture of the kind that the public loved in the 19th century at the big exhibitions, like The Salon and the Royal Academy.

And it’s accomplished, it’s a rather conventional work. And he did big sort of rather bombastic, historical epic pictures like this depiction of the arrival of the Magyars in Hungary, but he needn’t detainers very long. Rather more interesting is this artist Jozsef Rippl-Ronai, and he’s the first modernist Hungarian painter. He went to Paris in the 1890s. He became associated with the Nabis group, artists like Vuillard, Bonnard, Maurice Denis and so on. And he was very much part of the circle of the “Revue Blanche,” this avant-garde art magazine in the 1890s. And, I mean, these are attractive, charming works. I wouldn’t say he’s a really major artist, but he’s a major figure for Hungarian painting because he was so well connected in Paris. And he was really, a kind of a father figure to Hungarian modern art, introducing many younger Hungarian artists into Parisian avant-garde circles. Here are two more works by Jozsef Rippl-Ronai. All these rather difficult complicated names are on the list that you should have been sent. And you can see, particularly, this tapestry on the left hand side, designed by him, has a very quality to it. But very soon into the 20th century, we find a much bolder kind of modernism associated with Fauvism, and particularly Matisse, who became an influential teacher. And many artists like, this is Vilmos Perlrott Csaba, who attended live drawing classes in Matisse’s studio.

And you can see they’re adopting, Fauvism is really French expressionism, very direct, primitive, deliberately rather crude painting. And these are paintings again by, actually, these are by Robert Berenyi. And you can see again, very obvious Matisse influence, particularly the painting on the right hand side with those shocking pinks and boys, and greens. This is the same artist, Berenyi, and it’s a portrait of the Hungarian Jewish composer, Leo Weiner. And again, a painting which is, it’s Hungarian expressionism or Hungarian Fauvism with these absolutely vibrant, gorgeous, brilliant colours. This is “Shandor Sifa,” and the date, 1908. I mean, Hungarians were say far, far more up to the mark with modernism than the Brits or the Americans were at this stage. And these are two paintings by Bela Czobel, again, dated 1908. The plant on the left hand side, and the cabaret scene is 1907. So really, very quickly in the footsteps of artists like Matisse, Durer, van Dongen and so on. This is a painting by Alfred Reth, R-E-T-H. In fact, his real name, his birth name was Roth. And I suspect he probably changed the vowel in his name to make it sound less Jewish as he was of Jewish origin. And he’s the most, as you can see, we’ve moved on now from Fauvism to Cubism. And he is the most important Hungarian Cubist, like all of these artists, a very, very intense, direct connection between Budapest and Paris. Interestingly, all these artists, instead of going to Vienna or Munich, they went directly to Paris.

And he spent quite a lot of his life in Paris. And you can find drawings by him quite easily. I bought this one in my favourite gallery in Paris Galerie du Forum. There were two, I’d rather regret, I didn’t get the other one as well. I think it’s really terrific, a sort of dynamic, confident, cubist modernism. And here you can see a very coloured version of Cubism. This is an artist called Imre Szobotka. And the clear influence here, of course, particularly on the left hand side is Robert Delaunay with his so called Orphism, his very brightly coloured version of Cubism. And this is Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, who’s moved on from Cubism to abstraction, and I suppose he’s better known now for his three-dimensional things, and for his graphic design. He went on to from Hungary to, he’s an important figure, the Bauhaus. And then, had to flee, of course, in 1933 from Germany, and actually came to Britain for a while before going to America. Now onto music. And Budapest is undoubtedly one of the great musical capitals of the world. Somebody was mentioning at the end last time, there’s such a wonderful array as in Prague, of course, of music for you to listen to when you go to Budapest. This is the Liszt Academy, which was built between 1904 and 1907. And I just think this is one of the most gorgeous and sumptuous, and amazing concert halls in the world. You can see the figure of Liszt seated on a kind of throne in the middle of the facade. It’s the interior which is really wonderful, although better view of Liszt throning it on the facade.

Ah, this actually really doesn’t do justice to how unbelievably gorgeous the interior of this concert hall is. It’s exactly contemporary with the Palace of Music in Barcelona. And both of them you can say are local variants, very special local variants of the Art Nouveau style, both unbelievably gorgeous and sumptuous. And you might think from my image on the screen, you might think that’s a bit over the top of bit ketchy as the same if you were looking at images of the Palace of Music in Barcelona. But in both cases, there is an extraordinary refinement of detail, you can see here in this detail of the entrance way with, a very precious materials being used, expensive marbles and lots of gold, and so on and semi-precious stones. Well, here is Mr. Liszt, who was Franz Liszt or Liszt Ferenc in his proper Hungarian Appalachian. And he’s born in 1811 and he dies in 1886. Funny enough, I’ve just been looking at this very portrait by Henri Lehmann’s portrait of Liszt, ‘cause it’s now in the museum of city of Paris, The Carnavalet Museum. Of course, when he was young, Liszt was considered to be absolutely drop-dead beautiful. He was the pop idol of his day.

And I think it was, wasn’t it Heiner who coined the term Lisztomania, and 'cause he drove audiences, particularly female audiences absolutely hysterical with excitement all around Europe. So, he was born in Hungary and he was technically Hungarian, but he was brought up as a German speaker, and he hardly spoke any Hungarian. Towards the end of his life, he was enticed back to Budapest, and he was offered a very sumptuous apartment there, and made a great fussle. And I think he liked to think of himself as Hungarian, and he certainly, the first major classical composer to make use of Hungarian folk elements in music written for the concert hall. And this is an example.

• Well, I hope that, . So here is his apartment on Andrassy Avenue in the heart or Budapest. And you can see it’s very sumptuously furnished, and it has an extraordinary collection of pianos that all belong to Liszt and everybody. Liszt was, I suppose, the most celebrated piano virtuoso who has ever lived. And of course, every piano manufacturer wanted to give him a piano 'cause it was great publicity for them if he used one of their pianos. And this is a recording that I bought at the Liszt Museum of somebody playing one of Liszt’s pianos, I can’t remember which one it was, of course, one of his very famous pieces. Liebestraum, I’m sure you recognised it. But actually, a more authentic Hungarian composer who can better claim, I think, to be a Hungarian national composer is Carl Goldmark, who was Jewish, but very Hungarian and Hungarian speaking. And again, somebody a bit like Mihai Munkachi, who was very celebrated in his lifetime. And he lived a long time, he lived into the 20th century, and three works in particular were very widely performed in at large his opera, “The Queen of Sheba.” I know I’ve played you an excerpt of that in a lecture recently, I think about that would’ve been one of the Vienna lectures, and 'cause it was a staple of the repertoire, repertoire of the Vienna Opera right up to the Angeles, A violin concerto, which still get performed occasionally.

And the delicious “Rustic Wedding Symphony,” which was a great favourite of Mahler, and a great favourite oddly, of Sir Thomas Beecham, who recorded it. And to play you the opening of Beecham’s recording. I know there are lots of Mahlerians in our audience, people who’d be very familiar with Mahler. And you’ll know Mahler’s first symphony with its very charming introduction of a Landler, a rustic dance. And I think that that Mahler’s use of that rustic dance owes a lot to the opening of Karl Goldmark’s “Rustic Wedding Symphony.” And Hungary has also been very famous in the 19th and 20th century for its great violinist. And the greatest of all was Jozsef Joachim, also Hungarian-Jewish, particularly associated under all those great, great violin concertos of the 19th century, Mendelssohn, Bruch and Brahms. They were all written for him and promoted by him. This is his plaque on a house in Budapest, of course, his career was very much an international one. And on the left is a drawing of him by Adolph Menzel. There are recordings of Joachim, but they’re very primitive and also possibly too late. So I thought I won’t inflict one of those on you. But the other very, very influential Hungarian violinist as a teacher was Jeno Hubay, who’s also a composer actually, although not so known outside of Hungary for his own music. But here he is with perhaps his greatest pupil, Joseph Szigeti, again, one of the great virtuosos of the 20th century.

And here is Szigeti later in life with Bartok. And here is a little excerpt over recording of Bartok accompanying Szigeti. And here’s a much younger Bartok on the left with his great lifelong friend, Kodaly. They’re the two leading Hungarian composers of the first half of the 20th century. And the pair of them, like Vaughn Williams and Percy Granger used to go off on great hikes, walking tours of the countryside. And they had one of these machines, one of these little phonographs that you see on the right hand side. This is a later picture of Kodaly with one of these little recording machines. Looks quite heavy, really to lug around the countryside. And they recorded the songs of the Hungarian peasants, not just what we call Hungary today because they travelled into Transylvania, which is now Romania, which was then part of Hungary. And here you can see one of these expeditions taking place. And I’m going to play you a recording that was made by Kodaly of a peasant singing a song called “The Peacock.”

• And you might not think that was all that promising, but just listen to the exquisite sounds that Kodaly managed to get out of that simple tune. And that’s the Ebony piece. Now, what is the origin of Hungarian folk music? There’s a lot of debate about it. Is it in inverted commas, “Gypsy?” I know one’s not supposed to use that word anymore. Is it Jewish? Is it actually a fusion of the two? I mean, it’s something so distinctive, of course, you recognise it immediately. And one of the things that is most distinctive is the use of the Hungarian national instrument, the cimbalom. Here is a cimbalom, and I was astonished to discover recently that the cimbalom hasn’t been there for centuries, it’s actually a modern invention. The first time a cimbalom was presented to the public was at the Vienna World Fair of 1873. But anyway, certainly taken up enthusiastically by Hungarian folk musicians. And if, you know, go to a nice restaurant in Budapest, the most restaurants have musical accompaniment, and it’s very likely to be a cimbalom, and you’re likely to hear something like this. And the serious classical composers also took it up, and it plays a prominent part in Kodaly’s most famous piece of music, the “Hary Janos” suite. And here, we’re going to hear a bit of “Hary Janos” with the cimbalom being used. So you see the cimbalom being integrated into a standard, classical orchestra. And I want to play you one more excerpt this time from a piece by Bartok, Bela Bartok.

And this was written in 1923. It’s called the “Dance Suite.” And it was commissioned by the city of Budapest to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the joining together of the cities of Buda and Pest. So here is, I mean, I must say I’ve sometimes, in restaurants in Vienna and Budapest, I do find this a bit tiresome, where you are trying to eat your goulash, and some violinist will come over and perform like this right into your goulash. And you have to actually give them money to get them to go away and torment somebody else on another table. But these are traditionally, again, in inverted commas, “Gypsy musicians.” And this image, and this one, which I find almost unbearably poignant, comes from a magazine article. When I was researching my book about music in the Second World War, I was going through hundreds of magazines of the period. And this appeared, I think 1941, '42 in a pro-German propaganda magazine. But it shows a school where, you know, gipsies, Roma or Sinti, whatever you want to call them, they were being trained to play violins and musical instruments, so that they could earn some kind of living. What I find so absolutely heartbreaking about this picture is that, well, at this point, 1941, 1942, Hungary was still nominally independent.

But as we know, two years later, the Nazis invaded. And it’s very unlikely that any of the children you see in this photograph lived beyond 1944. This is the Operetta Theatre in Budapest. As you can see, they tend to do things like, you know, American-style musicals these days. Not so many traditional Hungarian operettas. But it was a great operetta capital, of course, Franz Lehar was originally Hungarian, and occasionally, used Hungarian idioms in his operettas. But the real card carrying, Hungarian operetta composer was Kalman, Emmerich Kalman. And if you find yourself in one of these big restaurants in Budapest, and there’s a little orchestra, inverted commas, “Gypsy orchestra,” and they will ask you what you want them to play. And they’ll play anything you want, really. But they’ll be absolutely delighted if you say, “Oh, can you please play us some Kalman Emmerich?” And then they’ll be woof. There’ll be away with it. Here is Kalman, Emmerich Kalman, I talked about him before when I was talking about operetta of course. And he was a mate of Admiral Horthy, who wisely advised him to get out of Hungary before the start of the Second World War, on the eve of the Second World War. He was a very wealthy man, he was hugely successful. I think he actually travelled on the Normandy to America with vast numbers of cases, full of elegant clothes, and even stuffed with money. And he arrived in New York, and he managed to survive the war in America. And I’m going to play you a little bit of a broadcast with Kalman conducting his own music. And this is an American broadcast made during the Second World War.

SONG BEGINS

♪ Passion is a restless river ♪ ♪ Love a common boundless sea ♪ ♪ Love is a sparing giver ♪ ♪ Generous and brave, and free ♪ ♪ Passion is a pretty fun emotion ♪ ♪ Love is an eternal devotion ♪ ♪ So shall I come out sweet for you ♪ ♪ Before the world, before you dear ♪ ♪ Why have you chosen me ♪ ♪ Abandoning your call my will ♪ ♪ Love is love that pays the price ♪ ♪ And pure and selfless sacrifice ♪ ♪ To find at last that road ♪ ♪ Dangerous love and faded road ♪

SONG ENDS

• The First World War caused an unbelievable catastrophe for every single country involved in it, but particularly terrible for Hungary. A relatively small country that lost 2 million dead. And of course, at the end of the war, it lost nearly half its territory. This is the a map showing the ethnic and linguistic breakdown of Hungary. So, 'cause the doctrine of the Versailles Treaty, very much promoted by the Americans and Woodrow Wilson, was that every linguistic and ethnic group should have self-determination, should have its own country. Look at this, it’s impossible. You can’t actually, it was a recipe for disaster. It was a recipe for another terrible European-wide war. And of course, we’ve got similar situation, Ukraine with pockets of Russian speakers and so on. So I mean, there’s only so far you can take this doctrine of self-determination. So this is a map that shows, the pink part of course is what Hungary was reduced to. And the darker grey is what it had been before the First World War. So this humiliation, this reduction of Hungary was very, very bitterly felt. And I know Trudy’s talked a lot about this, so I’m not going to, I’m just going to mention it.

You have a left wing revolution, and you have a communist Soviet Government, and the Jewish politician, Bela Kun. And then you have a right wing, extreme right wing counterrevolution and terrible cruelty. Terrible, I can’t tell you which is which. One of these is a left wing atrocity. And one is a right wing atrocity. And it’s a totally chaotic situation. And then, oh, what a publicity coup. Admiral Horthy comes galloping into Budapest to sort everything out in 1919, where he was the strong man that everybody wanted. The big joke was, of course, that he was Admiral Horthy, regent of Hungary. So he was regent of the country without a king because there was no king anymore. And he was admiral of a country with no coastline and no fleet. But that didn’t seem to bother people. This is his portrait and his uniform, which you can see in the Hungarian National Museum. I know Trudy talked at great length about him. He’s an extremely ambiguous figure. He’s a very strange mixture. It’s the cliche of the anti-Semite. Some of his best friends were Jews and all that stuff. He actually, I think genuinely, although anti-Jewish measures were introduced under pressure from Germany, but I do believe that Horthy did everything he humanly could to protect Hungarian Jews. I don’t know about any other, I don’t think he was interested in any other Jews. And this is an interesting photograph that shows a state occasion, where Hitler is receiving Horthy and his wife.

And you can see that every single person in this photograph is doing the Nazi salute except Horthy and his wife. And that was quite, I think, a significant gesture. I don’t think he bought into Nazi ideas, but as the war progressed and it became evident that Hitler was going to be defeated, Horthy was desperate to find a way out, and he was an ally to Hitler. His troops were beside the German troops on the front against the Russians. But Hitler got wind of this, and in March, 1944, the Germans invade Hungary. This is what you see here, the German troops arriving in Budapest in 1944. And of course, there’s a huge debate about this. Why, why did Hitler do this? It was a futile thing in a way, and surely, wasn’t it actually even, you know, diverting much needed resources from the Russian front. And there is a theory that one reason why the Germans invaded, I think Trudy believes this, is that the Hungarian Jews were the last pocket of Central European jury. And before they went down, the Nazis wanted to make sure they exterminated Hungarian jury as well. So there are terrible scenes of Jews being rounded up, was forced to wear the yellow star and all that stuff. And they were enthusiastically helped by the local Hungarian Nazis, the Arrow Cross, who in rather like the Milice in France, I mean, they were sometimes actually much worse than the occupying German troops. And this terrible atrocity, most notorious atrocity, as far as Budapest is concerned at the Second World War, was when hundreds of Jews were lined up on the banks of the Danube, and told to take their shoes off, shoe’s a valuable leather in short supply. And then, they were all machine gunned into the river Danube, their bodies floating down the river and their shoes left behind on the banks of the river. And there is this just such a poignant, I think to me, this is the most effective, the most poignant monument I know to the victims of the Holocaust.

These bronze shoes on the side of the Danube in front of the parliament building. And then you have this heroic struggle to save as many Jews as possible. The Swedish diplomat, Raoul Wallenberg, who you see on the left hand side, who became obsessed, totally obsessed. It was his ultimate mission. He was, you know, night and day, he was rushing around handing out Schutz-Pass, protective passports, trying to get as many Jews to safety or to protect them, getting them into safe houses. And I think there’s a great, I know there’ve been so many films about the Holocaust, you might think enough already, but I think there is an interesting play or film to be written or created about this desperate struggle between two obsessed men, Raoul Wallenberg, Adolf Eichmann. In the last months with the Russians arriving, they knew they were in the end game. One, trying to murder as many Jews as he possibly could, totally obsessed, going way beyond orders. I suppose they were both going beyond orders, actually. As I said, they’re two obsessed men. And we know, and I think Trudy will have mentioned this to you, that they actually met for dinner. And I just think, oh, I mean, what could they have talked about it? It needs a really great playwright to do this.

Tom Stoppard or David Hare, who can really think of what the conversation could have been like, and create convincing dialogue for them. So a great unnecessary battle, I mean, I feel it so much at the moment with the impending battle for Kyiv. But the battle for Budapest and, of course, for the Nazis, it was lost before it began. It was up utterly pointless for the Germans to try and hold onto it, but they did on Hitler’s orders. And the battle was engaged in December, 1944, and the Germans did not concede defeat until February, 1945. And it was the kind of fighting, I’m afraid, that we are likely to see in the coming weeks. It was street by street through the city with unbelievable destruction. It’s reckoned that 80% of the buildings in Budapest were either totally destroyed or severely damaged, here as you can see, what was left of the chain bridge. This is wherem here we are in Buda, beautiful picturesque Buda reduced to ruins. And when I first went to Budapest, it’s not that long ago, it’s 10 years ago I suppose, once you get off Andrassy Avenue, and the really big avenues, everywhere you look, you can see evidence of the street battles. The shrapnel damage, you can see, you know, machine gun trails, machine gun bullets, you know, all over the city. It’s only gradually, gradually being repaired, all of this. And then you’ve got the communist period that really under the boot of the Russians. And somebody mentioned last week that the House of Terror, and it’s a museum really commemorating the sufferings of the Hungarians and the people of Budapest in the Second World War and the communist period. I have very mixed feelings about this museum.

First of all, it’s incredibly, slickly presented with the methods almost, it’s like a Disneyland of horror, and very effective in a way. But I find myself feeling uncomfortable. There’s something almost pornographic about this slick exhibition of mans in humanity to man. And the other thing I feel very uncomfortable about, and I’d really like your reactions, what you think of this, is that the museum is presenting the sufferings of the Hungarian people under the Nazis, and under the communists as being equivalent. And that’s the evil of Nazism and the evil of communism, is acts is completely equivalent. I don’t doubt for a minute that Stalin’s communism was totally appalling, and there’s nothing to say for it. But I don’t feel that it’s equivalent to Nazi evil. And the other thing there is that the narrative here is that Hungarians were just totally passive victims. And of course, they weren’t. They find it very hard to acknowledge the truth that they were collaborators with the Germans against the Jews and the Gipsies. And so, then there’s 1956, and briefly the Hungarians throw off the shackles of the Russians, and Russians back again with the, well, here you can see a kind of brief euphoria statue of Stalin, defaced and overthrown. But the tanks back again. And then, at the fall of the iron curtain, and Hungary, supposedly, a democratic country.

But I would say it’s only a quasi-democratic country. It slipped back. Viktor Orban, nasty piece of work, as my friend Clive and Bonnie remarked in the comments last week, not a true Democrat, and not really somebody who should be part of the European Union. And you can see him here schmoozing with Putin, and worrying because everywhere, even I say this country, I’m in France, but in my country, which is Britain, I feel that everywhere democracy is under threat. Independent news organisations are under threat. Always the excuse is, oh, they’re biassed against us. Well, as soon as you have a government that tries to interfere with news organisations on the grounds that they’re biassed, you know you’re in trouble. So anyway, I want to end on a nice note, reasons to go to Budapest despite the horrible Mr. Orban. Somebody last week mentioned the Central Food Hall, which is such a wonderful place to go to. And just look at all that, these forests of paprika and garlic. So you know what kind of food you are going to get. And maybe not everything might be to your taste, you know, horse meat, sausages, more paprika, and all sorts of interesting alcoholic drinks. You want to try a wonderful, when if it’s really good, a Hungarian goulash can be a wonderful thing. And somebody last week was also mentioning Gundel, that is the most famous restaurant in Budapest. Very elegant, managed to survive all the way through the communist period. I suppose the communist officials were just as corrupt, and as anybody else, they like their good food. And yeah, you have to go if you go, you know, I think you have to set aside one evening to go there.

It’s an experience, even if it isn’t these days a little bit touristic, this is the kind of food that you might get with freshwater fish and goose liver. So it’s very good, but this is my tip. This is a small cafe next to the National Museum. It’s called Cafe Intenzo with a Z. And I went in there one day for lunch and this is what I ate. This is a goose liver with a pear student red wine. It was so unbelievable. It was actually one of the most delicious things I’ve ever eaten in my life. And I liked it so much, I went back the next day, and I had exactly the same lunch two days running. And cakes. I’m not really a great fan of cakes apart from moon kuhn, the poppy seed cake. And I like nut cakes. You got nut cake on the left here, and the poppy seed cake on the right. They’re very typical Hungarian things. And of course, Jegbufe, mentioned last week, one of the most famous cake shops in Europe. And actually, just before I come out, talking of indulging, spending money, I want to show you my purchases yesterday at the flea market. This delightful pair of drawings. I love the lady rather provocatively adjusting her garter on the right hand side, dating from the 1920s.

I paid the royal sum of 10 euros for those two drawings, and the same 10 euros for this nice art decor watercolour of an elegant interior. On the right, I picked this up just 'cause I’ve already got this several times over. It must be quite common I suppose. But it’s a medal by the way well-known sculptor, Paul Landowski, who did the Big Christ over Rio de Janeiro. And there I saw this nice in its original case, and that was only 10 euros. So where can you find a piece of sculpture in bronze by a well-known artist for 20 euros? And on the left, my biggest thrill yesterday was a first edition of Cocteau’s French adaption of Tennessee Williams, “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Beautifully illustrated throughout by drawings by Cocteau. So I bought that for 15 Euros. I checked not on eBay, I think it was on 8 Books. And otherwise, if I bought it from 8 Books, it would cost 250 Euros. So just boasting there about my purchases from yesterday. So let’s come out and see what we’ve got my way.

Q&A and Comments:

Thank you from snowy Toronto. I’m thrilled to be back in Paris.

Thank you, Naomi. Budapest Opera has reopened with a gala, and today they’re playing another air called National Opera, Hunyadi Laszlo. Yes, that’s good news. I can’t say anything. Somebody asked about the music spring festival. Yes, last time, I don’t know enough to tell you about it.

Q: Is there any Hungarian art in London?

A: You know, I’d really have to think about that. Tate Modern might have something, but I don’t think so. Probably the British Museum drawings, they would have some things. Musique for lions are bit similar, lots of gold.

Liszt was very, apparently very anti-Semitic. Not as bad as Wagner, but I don’t think he was. But I don’t think, Liszt anti-Semitism was probably more the sort of endemic type of the 19th century rather than the fanatical.

No, Liszt never married. He wanted to, and he applied with mission to marry princess, Suzanne Wittgenstein. And he was all going to go ahead, and then the Catholic church changed their mind, and he decided never to marry.

Josephine Veasey, it’s sad to read about that, although I gather she’d been in a bad way. She was a wonderful singer, I heard. She her heard her out sing so many is oldest when she was singing Bran Gayner Herman Valt, that’s interesting. I will look that up. I don’t know him, but there are so many wonderful artists to discover.

Q: Thank you, Mona. What’s the acoustics like?

A: Fantastic. Very good, yeah. Cimbalom may have developed from the zither, apparently, oops, it’s a dulcimer. It’s basically a dulcimer, but don’t ask me to define the difference between a zither and dulcimer, and a cimbalom.

Kodaly liked to hike in the Buda Hills next to your elementary school. You met him, how wonderful! Came in a big, well, because he was very famous, very successful. And 'cause he’s very important, not just in Hungary, but worldwide for his methods of children’s education, musical education.

Can’t tell you, I’m sorry. I can tell you the difference in the sound, but how, the exact definition of how they’re different, I don’t know.

Oh, Maria, she’s got paintings by Rippl-Ronai. Oh, how wonderful to have a portrait of your mother by him. It’s cimbalom, I don’t know, I can’t remember if it’s in the notes you’ve been sent.

This is Francine saying, “As a child and the team, we dined in a Hungarian restaurant every Sunday. I was studying classical piano at the time. There were marvellous violinists playing both classical and folk music. I remember thinking that it had gypsy influence.” But you know, I mean, I know this is all terribly dodgy these days. You have to be careful the terms you use. But I think, yeah, gypsy music and klezmer, they’re very related.

Q: Which modern day European countries did the Romani?

A: That I don’t know.

Dorrett, oh, yes, Dorrett. Wonderful lady, a great inspiration. Daughter of the violinist, who was the lead violinist of the Palestine Orchestra. We met in Budapest at a conference. And I think we didn’t stop talking for the whole weekend.

This is Mickey. Growing up in Holland, we loved Hungarian orchestras performed by refugees from the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.

Q: Did I notice that the young boy playing the violin was barefoot?

A: Yes, I know. Yes, as I said, I find that photograph just unbearably poignant. How Hungarian, that is very debatable, and I’m not sufficiently expert to tell you. And people have different views about how really Hungarian it is.

Roma, restaurant. Maitre’d wanted to throw him out. But madam, he’s a gypsy. I know, it’s funny. You know, I think prejudice against gipsies is probably more deep-rooted, even than anti-Semitism. And it’s very, very hard to eradicate.

“She Loves Me,” a 1963 musical set in 1930s, Budapest. I don’t know, but it sounds like something to…

Oh, same, “The Shop Around the Corner.” That’s a wonderful film, of course. When I visited Budapest, a guy said to me, the shoes on the bank Danube were hidden by sympathetic non-Jews, and put on the banks after the war. I didn’t know that. Yes, the Nazis wanted to reuse them, of course.

This is Abigail Seth recommending book, “Budapest 44” about the struggles of Jews and Hungarians against the Nazi occupation.

This is Lucy, my great-grandmother, her son and daughter-in-law survived the siege of Budapest. There were connecting cellars that they used to stay in. It must have been horrific beyond imagination.

This is Abigail, my mother told me that Russians came through the basements, breaking through from house to house to overcome the siege of Budapest. Yeah, and I know there was damage in 1956. I don’t think it was on anything like, on the scale of the '44 to '45. And there are particularly buildings around the parliament building, which have a lot of shrapnel bullet damage from 1956.

I’ve been to Jewish museums of the Holocaust. Well, of course, I’ve been to the synagogue. But I don’t know all the Jewish museums in Budapest.

As an average student of art history, I longer had to reconcile mind to the reality of art, culture and morality are sadly not equivalences. That’s certainly true. I know that, certainly, one of the great mysteries, what happened to Raoul Wallenberg? Why, why did it happen? Why did the Russians want to take him and murder him?

No, Abigail, you’re so right. My great, great Hungarian friend, Truda Levy, one of the great friends of my life, and she spent the last part of her life with, you know, Holocaust education, and what she always said was, you must never generalise, never generalise. So we, you know, it’s wrong to say that all Germans are bad or Hungarians are bad. People are people wherever they are.

Yes, strudel in the market. That’s nice. Well, yes, let’s hope that there could be some good things that come out of the horror that we’re enduring at the moment. The owner of the Cafe des Artistes in New York, now closed, had some involvement in the rejuvenation of Gundel. I’m glad you like my purchases. I’m very pleased with them. I went to both flea markets this weekend, but all the things I bought were, and I do better these days at Porte de Vanves in the south of Paris rather than the bigger one, Clignancourt in the north.

Yes, thank you all. Nice comments. And yes, it’s just amazing what you can get at the flea market. I never come away empty-handed, and I don’t have to spend a lot of money. Thank you all for your very nice comments.

And a gloomy Sunday, I certainly could cut the Hungarian suicide song, which became a huge international hit. And there are two versions I particularly like of it, the version in French by the great French chanson singer, Damia. She was known as the . She does a wonderfully downbeat, gloomy version. But in Britain, the really popular version was Paul Robeson. It’s a very beautiful record. And it was actually banned by the BBC because every time it got played on the radio, there’d be a wave of suicides that that followed. So be careful, if you want to listen to it on YouTube. Cafe Intenzo does home delivery, but too bad not in Toronto, nor here. But if you’re in Budapest, you should really go there.

Yes, awful depressing political things.

So, oh, continuing the customer collecting folk songs. I mentioned Akol last week. I had quite a big bit about Akol last week, so you must have missed that lecture.

Purim, in this week, in South Africa, we ate wonderful hamentashen. Warm and pillowy, sounds delicious.

Q: Oh, Tokai. Do I know anything about Jews and their place in the Tokai winding street?

A: No, I’m sorry, I don’t. Thank you, Tibor. On Orban’s almost unlimited support of the Jewish community of Hungary. I don’t know enough about this. I thought that what I find very sinister, of course, is that, you know, that the way they’re trying to deny Hungarian activity, collaboration during Second World War. So I wouldn’t say that, that is total support in the Jewish community.

Q: Tony, great aunt made zithers in Hungary. Was this item in Hungary ever any more than the basic comb and grease paint paper that we made at school?

A: That, I don’t know. I don’t know.

Q: The Great Synagogue in Budapest was the largest in Europe. Is it bigger than the one in Trieste?

A: I don’t know that. I’m dying to go to Trieste. Actually, it’s top of my list. My friend, Fiona and I, plan to go there maybe this summer. I haven’t visited the musuem Zust in Switzerland. Yeah.

Q: Where do you store?

A: Well, if you could see the chaos around me. I don’t really store them. They’re just piled everywhere.

Oh, is there a film called “Gloomy Sunday?” I didn’t know that.

Thriving Jewish scene, religious scene. And that’s good to know. I haven’t got any trips to Budapest planned really. This year I’m quite booked up 'cause I’ve got Vienna, Munich, Paris, and Parma for the second part of this year. But that seems to be it. Thank you all very, very much indeed. It’s been fun.

And we’re on to Prague next time.