|
Fanni Völgyessy Szomor
In November 2002, Fanni’s latest album, Tündér Rózsa was released. A beautiful album packed in a special box and consisting of a CD and a hard cover book, containing beautiful poetry written by Fanni. We wanted to know more about this interesting product.
Musical Discoveries: What should we know about Tündér Rózsa?
Fanni: The book contains my thoughts displayed and is llustrated with my pictures for everyone to read. My own atmosphere and moods. And dealing with incomplete or impossible love, with pain and striving for perfect unity.
In other words: a desire for a state that on this planet might or might not be obtainable, depending on ones experiences and convictions. The songs that are featured on the album originate from Hungarian and Irish sources or were inspired by these sources. Two poems are featured from famous Hungarian poet László Nagy, (1925-1978) that were set to music by Károly Binder. On the recordings known Hungarian musicians took part like Károly Binder, Péter Pejtsik (After Crying) and Zoltán Lengyel (After Crying).
The music on the CD I wouldn’t describe as typical folk music.
That’s true! In the arrangement of the songs I didn’t aim for a real traditional folk music sound. Even though naturally the folksongs “are fed” from their very ancient roots I still took the courage to approach them from a different direction. Although I feel the songs didn’t “give in easily” and that’s a good thing. I think, with a fresh approach but still preserving their identity, we succeeded to make them sound different.
In what kind of style category would you position your music?
I wouldn’t like to categorise and sum up different styles of music, but I know people generally would like to define styles and ‘put the music in a certain square’ as this makes things easier for them to compare. That’s why I will say this: First of all beautiful, airy–as in the sense of light, feminine, elegant and progressive, because I approached things from another side. One could also say ‘classical’ when I think of the fine piano and cello parts. But even though it contains all these styles the music fits the world music category best. I would say It rather depends on what the listener sees, hears and finds in the music.
I heard the music was recorded and produced in three different studios.
Yes, actually we worked in even more studios, mostly because of merely technical reasons. At Inita studios, where we recorded the cello and the vocals we didn’t have the grand piano that Binder needed for his parts, So we recorded these parts in another more specialized studio. And for instance together with Peter and Zoltán we arranged and prepared the songs they worked and played on in their private home studios. Finally, In the last studio, named Master Voice, we worked with Zsé (Zsolt Suták) who in a way took care of the post-production’ and mastering of the album. He made everything sound even better and more contemporary, added special effects, percussion and also background noises that enhanced the atmosphere we were looking for.
With this material you do not follow the unwritten rules that the media nowadays seem to set to the performers.
Thank God that the media do not define my life. Neither do they influence my goals and the way I look at or listen to music. Otherwise we would all play ‘schramli’ pop music here in Hungary, ha ha ha! It’s true that in this way it’s harder, because I’m not inclined to compete with ever bigger and louder advertising. Tempo-wise I’d like to take it more slowly, try to slow down the people running around on the streets, rather than hollering after them or catch them while they’re running. But of course only we can direct the tempo our own lives and goals and nobody can force us to do what we do not want.
How and in what way can you than combine these two different worlds of art and business?
In this way I can call myself very lucky as two my publisher and my manager help me in my work, in this case Bestline publishers and Ynot management. They help me in such a way distributing and promoting the album in every possible way. With me they believe that the quality of the product stands for itself and we do not need strange manipulations for people to get to know and love what I do or to find this high beautiful album in the shops.
More Fanni Völgyessy Szmor
An Illustrated Biographical Sketch
You And I Exit Review
Tündér Rózsa Review
Interview, reviews and HTML © R. W. Elliot 2000-2003
All images © Ynot Management 2003
Last updated 09 February 2003