Concertino for harp and orchestra

….My Christmas holiday with the family at Püspöknádasd was spent finishing off my Concertino for harp.

The première took place on 11 March 1937 in Budapest and then was played in Belgium and Rome. In Cluj in 1939, the Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet was to conduct my work –the posters had already been put up– but because of the war he cancelled all his concerts in Hungary.

In composing my Concertino, I wanted to avoid all the clichés usually associated with the instrument, like glissandos or arpeggios. But I gave in quickly, finding such puritanism too excessive.

In 1956, I wrote a second version, simpler and more virtuoso, inserting a cadenza in the first and second movements, the latter notably comprising an ostinato at the harp accompanied by the pianissimo chords of the strings”. — Ferenc Farkas Extract from the book by András Farkas Mon père m’a raconté…

In 1994, Farkas replaced the symphonic accompaniment of his concertino for harp by a string orchestra, which can itself be reduced to a string quartet.