My spiritual Scholar

Throughout his lifetime, Ferenc Fricsay declared himself as my spiritual student, although at the entry examination for the Music Academy, his father had asked his old friend Siklos to be his teacher. During his activities as a conductor we became closer and closer. I admired the tough persis-tence with which he established an incredible orchestral culture in a provincial town like Szeged and conjured up young wind players from nowhere. At the Budapest Opera he mainly staged Italian masterpieces and brought them to new glory. Interrupted by the war, his rise only started after 1945, when, at last, he found a working environment which was worthy of him. We, in Hungary, followed his way up from far away and measured it by the few records that reached us.


                 

To my greatest joy, I was able to witness the world première he gave of my Symphony in Luzern in 1961 (see picture). That was when I could admire the immense invigorating power of his masterly skills, which were deeply rooted in an innate native musicality.
                                                                                                                   Zoltán Kodály