The
Romance lyrique is a very early work indeed, composed in 1898 by the teenage Kodály while he was still living in the village of Nagyszombat (now Trnava in Slovakia), where his father was stationmaster. Immature it may possibly be, and not wholly free of a hint of the salon, but it has a heart-easing main tune and a wonderful ardent lyricism in the spirit of Brahms, Dohnányi and Dvorák (whose Cello Concerto it seems to quote at the end of its central section).
from notes by Calum MacDonald © 2010
