The works of composer, violinist, and pedagogue Jenö Hubay were hardly known outside his native Hungary until recently, and the 11 works for violin and piano offered here, part of a larger series on the Hungaroton label, are claimed to have been recorded for the first time. Written in the decades on either side of 1900, they are mostly rooted in Liszt's combination of Western and European elements, and when modernist winds began to blow from Vienna they were shelved. Hubay was prolific, and there are groups of his works that aren't sharply differentiated from one another. Ataïr, the interesting-sounding "musical novel in five chapters" presented here, evokes its individual movement themes only in the most general way. But -- and this is what accounts for the new appeal of his music -- he was something of an eclectic. He wasn't really a nationalist, or a Brahmsian, or a member of the French orbit, but drew from all these schools and worked their elements into a fabric where they weren't really visible as individual strands. There was some of the salon in his style, but also something of the academy -- the nocturnes and romances and dances on this album are expertly constructed, without ever seeming trite. The violin parts, executed with flair by
Ferenc Szecsödi, contain plenty of technical challenges, but the works aren't stage showpieces, and each one holds the listener's interest. Pick up this album for good light listening that will allow you to sample a composer whose reputation is on the rise.