Zwei ungarische Tänze

In 1940 Hungary was not yet at war but it had already mobilized its army. In order to partly compensate for the people conscripted because of the war, the teachers were assigned to various civilian services during their holidays. I was allotted to the big market hall in Budapest where I had to sort out old documents. Fortunately my boss knew that I was a composer and after a while he closed his eyes to the fact that I was doing something else during working time. It was during this period, in a white coat, that I orchestrated the “Rhapsodia carpatiana” and the “Two Hungarian dances”.

The themes of these works came from my music for short films which I wanted to rescue and make more durable. I arranged folk music from Ruthenia - the Carpathian Ukrain - and also from Béla Bartók’s unpublished collected material.

— Ferenc Farkas