Mariann Falusi – Law-abiding thieves

Mariann Falusi has a new solo show entitled Law-Abiding Thieves in store for us at the House of Music Hungary, where she will perform pop songs drawn from the world of classical music with her diverse band. As they say: there is no such thing as pop music or classical music: only good and bad music. “The show will feature songs that were clearly inspired by classical music, or even that actually drew directly from the classic material. The world is full of songs that turned out that way, either intentionally or unintentionally. It’s a lot of fun to recall and seek out these works,” says Falusi. Her co-curator for the concert, Miklós Fáy, has more to add about the concept: “The melody is spinning away in the composer’s head, or perhaps it's not spinning at all, and that's the problem: something has to be written, preferably a big hit that will have listeners in their thousands and millions weeping into their pillows. And nothing is coming, and the phone-a-friend lifeline isn’t any help, either. But there is an immeasurable treasure of melodies out there: the many beautiful pieces of music that composers have amassed over the centuries. You can draw inspiriation from that. And before someone calls you a thief: there is nothing forbidden about doing so. Although the rules are changing, a few decades after the composer’s death, the works enter into the public domain, meaning a beautifully written hit song with decent lyrics can actually rescue a lost treasure, for example, if an 18th century composer wrote a lovely melody that we can enjoy even in the 21st. And no one should believe that the process is necessarily one-way. Bach, Beethoven, and later on, Stravinsky and Richard Strauss also believed that a melody belonged to everyone. Then came along the happy proud composers to ask for their share of the royalties. Nevertheless, we are more interested in the other direction of borrowing from treasures and saving them at the same time. We want to show how forgotten melodies seep back into our everyday lives, how Tchaikovsky becomes a country song, what Rachmaninoff has to do with Bridget Jones and Tárrega with a telephone ringtone. As they say: there is no such thing as pop music and classical music, only good and bad music. But mostly it's good.”