What Happened in Hungary: Day Six

I slept well again - or as well as one could with a paper-thin pillow and gurgling plumbing.  I learned at breakfast that some hardcore individuals had done an all-nighter (tellingly, they were mostly the non-playing 'guests') and found their way using the M2 and HÉV back to the hotel at approximately 6am. I'm impressed - there I was, thinking a only very select few of us had a monopoly on using foreign public transport successfully.

As if by way of preparation for tomorrow (and the next day), we had a long journey ahead of us, to the opposite side of the country to Sunday.  In a happy twist of fate, this was somewhere I'd been denied the opportunity to visit last time and would finally get to see now, specifically Lake Balaton, a long 25-by-2-mile pond which represents the largest body of fresh water in Europe.  It was, before the plethora of budget airlines arrived and enabled Hungarians to sunbathe elsewhere, a massively popular destination for Eastern Bloc families to take their holidays at, such that the whole of Budapest would effectively move out there for the summer. Today there are still plenty of tourists around, but they're more likely to be Australians or Germans, and there has developed a marked contrast between the south shore (sunburned lager-kissed hedonism) and north (thermal spa, private beaches, abbey). Luckily, we were avoiding the Hogarthian binge-disco sprawl of Siófok and heading for the nice seaside settlement of Balatonfüred (the town's website promotes it as a 'town of culture') for what was dubbed a 'fun concert'. The exact definition of this term can vary wildly, but in our case it meant a pot-pourri of light music.

We loaded everything we would need onto the bus, the 'come as you are' dress code meaning my bag was a lot lighter than for previous gigs, and headed out westwards through the city.  The next hour or so was motorway, so little to report there. I wrote, Companion did her Russian work, games of chess went on upstairs (yes, students really do play chess with commitment; it's not all vodka and vomit, you know). I spent time studying a borrowed score of the Bartók we'd been playing (cheers, Conductor), ensuring it lodged in my mind for the rest of the day.  But when we got off the M7 the landscape became rather more interesting. There were, as on the way to Eger, great fields of sunflowers on all sides, and distant hills which became not-so-distant the closer one got to the lake. In fact the first sight of the water was from half-way up an incline, when I looked to the right and saw the huge lake between the hills and the flood plain to the south. Balaton's waters have a very distinctive colour - blue-grey, the refraction of the sky, the hills and the silt that lies within the lake.  I'd read that the effect was particularly sublime near sunset.  It was a hot day, the first properly good one since Saturday, with a clear blue sky and light that enhanced every colour in the landscape, even through the window of a bus. We turned along a smaller road which brought us close to the lake, passing through red-roofed villages and other waterside settlements.  Signs with a smattering of English and German words advertised food and hotels, colour more important than content.  A single-track of railway flirted alongside the road at regular intervals, and presently a few open-windowed carriages hauled by a red locomotive trundled past, curiously-shaped signals nodding in acknowledgement.  Further up were the high hilltops where castles had been built overlooking the lake, and where on a day such as this one could see over into the Tatras, fifty kilometres north.

The north shore, like the south, is comprised of a series of towns along the waterfront, although much more tasteful and all with the name Balaton- as a prefix. At the edge of Balatonfüred the bus turned off and went down a minor road to a nondescript gate, which we were shown into  past the turnstiles.  We appeared to be at some kind of private beach, called a 'strand'. The lawns were meticulously manicured to a uniform length, the paths crossed at right-angles and the various water craft for hire were arranged neatly on racks at the water's edge. In fact, the whole place was just a little bit too neat, with none of the slightly weather-worn charm that English or French beaches exhibit.  The reason why quickly became apparent when I noticed that the signage and menus were in Hungarian and German.  Ah. I looked around to see how many towels were already on the sun loungers and how many Audis were in the car park, but it was actually rather quiet, with just a few groups of indeterminate nationality sitting around or swimming.  Meanwhile most of our party had assembled at the water's edge where a short ladder, like the one you'd find at a swimming pool, had been erected to enable individuals to enter the water in a sensible manner that Germans would approve of.  Several hardy souls had already changed and proceeded to wade out into the depths, towards what appeared to be an inflatable sports pitch, and beyond it, a yacht skilfully cutting through (possibly in a very real sense) pedallos, dinghies and other floating jetsam bobbing about in the water.  There were periodic cries of 'Uggh!' and the more Facebook-inspired 'Omigod!' as it was repeatedly discovered that the bottom of the shore was a) muddy and b) contained fish, seaweed and other marine life one might hope to find in a healthy body of water.

The aforementioned inflatable sports facility was quickly commandeered for a game which combined elements of handball, football and beating the bejesus out of your opponents, or at least it appeared that way from the shore. The general consensus seems to be that somebody won, but whether it was a team, an individual or some Germans is to this day unclear.  Anyway, once the mayhem had subsided the players dispersed into pedal boats and sun loungers, and I went to get some lunch. 

After just shy of two hours we were ushered back to the bus to go and rehearse. The drivers had had to store it in an adjacent car park, which didn't bode well for leaving promptly, and we set out on what turned out to be a very short hop up the road and back down another one to a hotel, which I loved because it appeared to be contained within an invisible bubble which preserved everything inside as per 1965. And preserved really was the operative word, for unlike scores of Warsaw Pact hotels which simply haven't been maintained since that date, this one was an immaculate time capsule. Even the coloured-in curbstones of the car park looked as if they'd been painted yesterday.  Hide any mobile phones, substitute the Suzukis outside for Trabants and Tatra 603s (in fact, contemporary Western automobiles would convincingly transplant it into a France or Switzerland of the same period) and you could fool yourself this was fifty years ago. Inside was much the same; beige marble, copious use of shiny plastics and gold fittings. I half expected to see Inspector Clouseau and the cast of The Italian Job checking in as we were hurried into an end room and urged to set up with haste. We were cutting things rather fine, apparently, and had to press on through the pieces for a gig in little more than an hour.

I don't like to be hurried at the best of times, and certainly not when I have to juggle instrument, bow, stand, 'doughnut', rosin and whatever else and ensure all the necessary items of music are present.  The music was mostly a diverse assortment of arrangements produced using the (otherwise excellent) notation software known as Sibelius, all printed on individual sheets of A4, with no binding when the piece exceeded one side long.  Whilst it all sounded great, it was not exactly conducive to finding the next item with great speed. 'I haven't got page two!' cried somebody from the mid-ranks of the violins. 'It's here!' replied another unlikely instrument.  We hastily got through everything, not without faff, before being urged to set down with equal haste as before. And then another five-minute air-conditioned drive round another two corners (meaning that our shuntings-about in Balatonfüred would, from the air, resemble a large letter E) to the quay in the centre of town.  This was a nice place with leafy parks and an assortment of boats bobbing about at the waterside. We would be performing on a reassuringly new and study-looking wooden stage, at a jaunty angle to the crescent of seating, which was rather arty-looking.  The only snag was that climbing on to the stage was something more easily accomplished without holding a cello free of danger, and we had to find a way of unpacking and hiding our cases at the stage rear whilst treading between chairs at some elevation above terra firma.  The audience could be described as expectant, in the sense that we were expecting them to arrive (in fact a healthy crowd had assembled by the end of our session).

There was not so much a sense of nervous excitement once we sat down as the terribly British 'erm, I suppose we'd better start then?'.  The programme was amongst the oddest ever assembled, consisting of light music items for the whole orchestra, various multiple-trumpet pieces, and all the 'extras' periodically banging, scraping, blowing and smiting diverse percussion instruments. I lamented that the swannee-whistle I'd dug out specifically for this occasion had, in the heat of the moment, been left in the glovebox of a Megane some 600 miles away (on second thoughts I'd have given my right arm to have had that car at my disposal on this trip), but luckily a substitute, probably with a less interesting history, had been found for the solo part in Anderson's*The Waltzing Cat.  The Tuba Mirum got another outing, strangely tragicomic in such a situation and rather less effective without a biblical acoustic present to aid it. And our guests were finally allowed to demonstrate their musical prowess in the Sandpaper Ballet (in which the composer actually specifies various different grades of the stuff for subtle contrasts in timbre).  Funnily/strangely/ironically enough, our Conductor had suddenly decided to use scores for this performance, despite the pieces being on average considerably easier to direct than those of previous gigs.

It was hot out in the sun and after a time I began to become somewhat concerned for the structural integrity of my instrument (having all but given up attempting to keep it in tune). Lest this seem to be of the 'but I might chip a nail' degree of concern, I ought to make it clear that my 'cello is not much shy of 200 years old and as such requires treatment appropriate to anything of that age, which includes not subjecting it to great levels of heat (yes, I know it's been in the bottom of a bus for much of this adventure and gets carried up stairs and subjected to various forces when I drive enthusiastically, but it's in its very protective case then).  There is only so long before the expansion of wood will overpower a type of glue specifically formulated to never set completely, and judging by the rate at which my strings were expanding and having to be re-tuned, it wasn't far off.  A more immediate problem is the wind, merrily rushing off the nearby water in ever-more enthusiastic gusts. All musicians who have had to perform outdoors will understand the considerable shortcomings of clothes pegs as a method of tethering music to a stand, particularly as they turn said device from an already unstable metal contraption into one now rigged with a A3-sized sail. God forbid the music consist of more then two sides, for then the 'inside' player will have to execute a complicated juggling-cum-balancing manoeuvre, switching the sheets without them being lost to the ether, whilst still ensuring the 'outside' player (who is still hacking away) has some chance of reading the dots. Everybody had a mini-disaster at some point in that concert, which if nothing else probably added to the entertainment value for the audience. 

We rattled off Hora Bucharesti about a tone and half adrift from the woodwinds (they get sharper as we get flatter) and then scarpered back inside the nearby village hall as soon as the applause had subsided. Queue for the single toilet, wait for the bus. Wait for the bus some more. Bus comes, pile on instruments and people. We hardly reach the edge of town before a Skoda comes past with blue lights flashing, waving at us to pull over. I assumed it was because they'd spotted a foreign coach as an easy target or somebody not wearing their seatbelt but it transpired we'd made a prohibited left turn, which the coach driver denied but was savvy enough to hand Plod enough banknotes to make him go away. Come to think of it, it was probably a combination of the two; I always assume foreign police forces make our own look positively saintly when it comes to picking on the weak and uninformed.

Our route home would be even more scenic than the one here, and would actually take us  across the water. Balaton has a 'throat' half-way across its length, consisting of the Tihany peninsula which juts out into the lake and forms the shortest crossing point for the car ferry. Up on the hill is an abbey dating from 1055 (sadly not visible from the coast road) and behind it a pair of lakes which are slowly turning to marsh.  The road itself was entertainingly undulating, especially going backwards on bouncy coach suspension.

We stopped at a small village at the southern tip with a collection of wooden sheds, cafes and souvenir stalls, where a concrete ramp led into the water.  This was obviously the ferry terminal at Tihany-Rev.  We had a few minutes to wait for the boat so I wasted no time in getting off to take some pictures now the sun was beginning to dim.  It was an idyllic scene. The waters of the lake were starting to take on the milky quality I had read about, slowly turning shades of purple, pink and grey-blue, reflecting the clear sky and the growing shadows of the hills. The ferry, a white flat-bottomed barge, moved noiselessly into the dock, dropping the ramp and disgorging a few cars.  Our bus, when its turn to board came, was positioned strategically in the centre of the boat, probably causing a mini tidal-wave at the opposite shore with the amount of water it displaced. We walked up the ramp after it and took up positions on the narrow passenger deck at one side of the vessel. Presently we got going and I got very snap-happy, particularly when an old steamer named for Jokai (one of Hungary's greatest poets) passed behind us. Looking back through my pictures - which don't really do justice to actually being there - it was simply gorgeous - our boat smoothly treading towards the southern shore, the waters turning more exotic shades by the minute, the sun sinking beneath the mountains at the end of the lake.  This was the Hungary one can hear in Bartók and Kodály, an experience that finally fitted all the imagined myths I create about a place. 

The voyage was about fifteen minutes at most and we were soon beaching next to an identical vessel at the corresponding landing stage of Szántód, in Somogy county.  I carefully descended the vessel's frontward steps (there was nothing to stop one leaping clean over the bow if one so wished) over the ramp and a short way up the road to where the bus had already parked.  It was a shame to leave the outside and go behind glass again, and I would happily have delayed leaving this place until the sun had properly disappeared. Still, dinner awaited.

Now, there's an interesting little story behind what happened on the way home.  Our fixer had, in connection with various concert promoters and orchestral connections in the country, commissioned a piece from Welsh composer Karl Jenkins.  I'm a little indifferent towards Jenkins' output, mostly due to his habit of repeatedly trotting out the same Classic-FM-friendly fluffy-harmonied un-contrapuntal repetitive axioms in every work (I won't, however, reproduce the story a friend told me of what he once overheard Jenkins say about his music in a pub) but there's no denying that he is a figure of some stature in the landscape of contemporary choral music.  Anyway, the reason why such a commission should come from Hungary is that the text he had set was Arany Janos' (or Janos Arany in Hungarian name order) A Walesi bárdok, translated as The Bards of Wales.  This poem deals with an episode in which Henry III orders Welsh bards to sing for him, and then gets into a strop and executes them, and as the link above relates, had been premièred a short while before in Budapest. The coach's staff were persuaded to play the recording of the performance through the bus so we could hear what it sounded like. I have to say that at the time I found it to be pleasantly surprising, although I can only remember one melody at present. Not a great, great work, but with something of a little more depth than the rest of Jenkins' output, and certainly good entertainment value.  And actually very good music for driving along, where it didn't matter too much if the odd phrase was lost to road noise.  We cruised back to Budapest with the sun dipping below the horizon behind us.

The Jokai on Balaton

The evening meal was in a restaurant near to the hotel. I say near, and it certainly seemed it when we drove past on a recce before arriving back, but it took us a good twenty minutes to walk there and we still weren't sure if it was the right one when we eventually got there.  The combination of open door and electric lights attracted a multitude of interesting insects and arthropods, much to the alarm of several people. The giant cicada made frequent circles of our table, clumsily flying into the back of several heads from time to time. I was as hungry as yesterday and was most pleased to see gulyas soup arrive at the table in a large tureen, followed by pots of chilli and paprika which I doled onto my portion with gusto. This was followed by a meat course and then some cream-and-lemon pancakes. Of course it was a little less spectacular than last night's offerings, but the setting more intimate. As with most trips, there were awards (which are usually planned so that absolutely everybody gets something) and I was duly celebrated in these for being the 'responsible adult' figure tirelessly laying down the law (see Day Four), which was fair enough. I suppose if one wants to be considerate, one should really contrive some memorable drunken antic which will make the job easy for those planning these things. 

And here's the irony.  Once the meal was over, we made our way, with a little tentativeness through the dimly lit streets, back to the hotel.  Somehow various containers of beers and a few spirits had been sourced and were put at our disposal. Yet the scene was quite remarkable. Here were gathered the same people who had been so bent on hedonism a few nights ago, presented with freely available boxes of drinks, and yet largely ignoring them.  Indeed, the general sentiment seemed to be 'we've got a long journey tomorrow chaps, so I'll make it a quick one and then get some sleep'.  Obviously I agree with this, but...well, it's surprisingly out of character for students on tour. You'd think that on the last night there'd be a massive party, really. 

Maybe there was, somewhere. I didn't hear it.

Next time: Several unexpected pleasures, and a distinct lack of breakdowns.

*Leroy Anderson, most feted for his Sleigh Ride, was a fascinating chap, and may feature in my Neglected Composers series in the future.