Subjective! Lecture series of András Batta - The World of Yesterday #2

This program is held in Hungarian.

The World of Yesterday is the title of Stefan Zweig's poignant autobiography, written as a refugee in a foreign country in the darkest years of Europe, before he left the "world of yesterday" of his own free will in 1942, in the hopelessness of "today". "A European 'among the whites', he bade farewell as the final conclusion to the tragic fate of his generation. For good, but not for good. What remains is a legacy, a memory and a hope that gives strength in times of crisis in Europe, including today. Europe draws from itself, renewed by its unique spirit. Perhaps it is the immortal past that will lead us into the future. A web of great works can protect old Europe from disintegration and extinction. In this sense, his new Subjective series turns to the world of yesterday.

The sense of farewell, the gesture of farewell, is present in almost all great composers - often the most heartfelt music. But there was a moment when it seemed that everything had to be said goodbye to. It is precisely this moment that Stefan Zweig, who inspired the title of the series, captured in the world of Yesterday. When everything went dark and Europe became like a sinking Atlantis. The last years of two composers, far removed from each other, were defined by a feeling of constant farewell, which of course led to completely different, even contradictory artistic results: those of Richard Strauss and Béla Bartók. Strangely enough, despite appearances, neither of them 'found a home at home'. Although New York (Bartók) and Garmisch Partenkirchen (Richard Strauss) were separated not by thousands of kilometres but by a world, the present of Europe weighed almost unbearably on both of them. That is why they turned to the past and, in their final farewell moments, raised the torch of European music high, inadvertently illuminating the further path of the soul's wanderings.