Duos for violin and violoncello

The name of Zoltán Kodály will always be irrevocably bound up with that of fellow countryman and friend Béla Bartók, with whom he collected and investigated the sources of original Hungarian folk music. After studying German and Hungarian, he even devoted a thesis to the Hungarian folksong in 1906. Despite political troubles and despite being thwarted by the Hungarian regime with its Nazi sympathies, as a member of the opposition Kodály metamorphosed into the fundament of Hungarian cultural life. And in contrast to Bartók, he even managed to get works performed abroad, works such as Psalmus Hungaricus and parts of Hary Janós. Kodály had made it his object to create a tradition of true Hungarian artistic music on the basis of Hungarian folklore and tradition, as can be heard in his own works. He remained in Hungary even when his good friend Bartók was given political asylum in the United States. He received many honours and afterthe war he was an internationally famed composer and instructor. Kodály died in Budapest in 1967.