A vocal phenomenon – that is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Mária Zádori’s art. And yet, the word feels too ostentatious, too showy. It does not suit a career so utterly free from the pursuit of cheap popularity, one that, instead of emphasising outward appearances, displays the utmost artistic humility while moving on the highest peaks of musical performance.
The phenomenal beauty of her voice, however, remains an undeniable fact. To borrow a biblical metaphor, this was the five talents that Mária Zádori was given as her endowment. That she was born with extraordinary vocal gifts was already evident from her first public success – her performance at the Ki mit tud? (Who Knows What?) competition organised by the Hungarian Television in 1965. She was sixteen at the time. In the final round she sang Gilda’s aria from Act I of Verdi’s Rigoletto – only the second aria she had ever learned in her singing lessons. Unfamiliar with technical difficulties, she mastered the dizzying heights of the part with complete ease; her quick vibrato, animating the coloraturas, already seemed less a vocal technique than a kind of spiritual, inner fire. And yet, compared to the mature singing of the later Mária Zádori, there is still a certain strangeness in this performance – the one with which “Mária Horváth, a student from the technical school of Nagykanizsa, won the competition of classical singers”. The naturalness of phrasing and the uniquely personal tone of voice are not quite there yet. It is an intriguing question what those other five talents were by which Mária Zádori made fruitful and fulfilled the divine gift she had been given.
The next turning point in her life came in 1971. That year László Virágh founded Ars Renata, a solo vocal ensemble devoted to the historically informed performance of Renaissance and early Baroque music, and Mária Zádori joined as a founding member. This “ahead-of-its-time” group within the Hungarian early music movement contributed to Zádori’s artistic development on several levels. On the one hand, she learned much from László Virágh about authentic vocal technique in early music; on the other, the work of Ars Renata was characterised by the inseparable unity of poetry and music. Thus, a receptive singer could not only master the art of clear articulation and interpretation of the text but also internalise one of the fundamental principles of Baroque vocal music: that the revelation of the affect of the music and text is the interpreter’s primary task. The roots of Zádori’s unparalleled sensitivity to textual expression can undoubtedly be traced back to this period. Another strand of her “official” musical career, one that served as a means of making a living, also began in 1971: that year she became a member of the Hungarian Radio Choir, to which she remained loyal until 1986 – even though her solo career as a singer had begun to rise several years earlier.
The wider public first came to know Mária Zádori’s exceptional voice through a black vinyl record released in 1980. The Mozart album, conducted by Iván Fischer, featured the so-called “Little” Credo Mass (K. 192) and the Vespers K. 339. Zádori – who at the time still held the modest position of a “chorus member” – not only blended harmoniously into the distinguished solo quartet and proved herself a worthy partner to Paul Esswood, Alexander Oliver, and László Polgár, but even in the Mass, which offers only limited solo opportunities, her entrances shine through the soundscape like bursts of radiant sunlight. The Laudate Dominum movement of the Vespers, in turn, is the soprano soloist’s true moment of glory, and at the same time a marvellous example of simplicity and almost instrument-free beauty. It stands as an early document of a singer who was already performing at a world-class level.
Another important milestone in Mária Zádori’s career came with the founding of the Capella Savaria ensemble by Pál Németh in 1981. The orchestra, devoted to the eighteenth-century repertoire of early music and destined to become one of the key institutions of the Hungarian period-performance movement, was soon embraced by the national recording industry. As both a member and the ensemble’s principal soloist, Mária Zádori enriched her discography with numerous outstanding recordings.
In 1984 she recorded Handel’s duets and cantatas with Paul Esswood. A year later came the recording of Handel’s Brockes Passion, which rose to become one of Hungaroton’s most outstanding releases. On this sensational record, under the brilliant direction of Nicholas McGegan, Mária Zádori – in the role of the Daughter of Zion (Tochter Zion) – stood out even among an eminent group of soloists (including Martin Klietmann, Guy de Mey, Drew Minter, and István Gáti). In the da capo aria reprises, she brought to life an astonishingly high level of Baroque improvisational ornamentation, previously unknown in Hungary. Her embellishments – testifying to profound and flawless musicianship – adorned the written part of her line like the finely chased detail of exquisite goldsmith’s work. This recording also marks the full flowering of her dramatic artistry. She conveyed every nuance of the soul that follows Christ’s Passion at close hand, expressing indignation, grief, quiet mourning, and lyrical inwardness with authenticity and depth. Her voice of wondrous beauty opens even further in the upper register (from high F upwards), suffused with a unique luminosity that is free from the piercing sharpness typical of many sopranos. The Daughter of Zion’s arias, with their transfigured, deeply moving, and at times poetically simple interpretations, are of the highest international standard – true gems of the Brockes Passion recording.
By the second half of the 1980s, Mária Zádori’s steadily increasing number of recordings had also begun to attract critical attention. In Hungary she was hailed as the “queen of Baroque singing”, even as “the Hungarian Emma Kirkby”, while foreign critics went so far as to note that Zádori’s voice surpassed that of the finest English early-music sopranos. Shortly afterwards, the most prestigious early-music ensembles abroad also began to invite her: she appeared at the Göttingen Handel Festival and later performed at the early-music festivals of Innsbruck, Ghent, Bruges, Regensburg, Karlsruhe, and Milan. She sang in London under Ton Koopman, toured Australia with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, and in the United States performed with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra of San Francisco, under Nicholas McGegan’s direction. She made numerous recordings for Bavarian Radio and Westdeutscher Rundfunk, among which one stands out as a rarity: the Trauermusik by Johann Ludwig Bach, cousin of Johann Sebastian Bach, recorded under the baton of Hermann Max with the Rheinische Kantorei and Das Kleine Konzert, and released on CD in 1998. When the new generation of the Hungarian early-music movement emerged twenty-five years ago with György Vashegyi’s Purcell Choir and Orfeo Orchestra, Mária Zádori naturally became the most sought-after soloist of these ensembles as well.
Yet beyond the enumeration of a successful career’s milestones, it is perhaps more important to recognize the unique qualities that define Mária Zádori’s art. In her performances of Claudio Monteverdi’s madrigals, Zádori reached an incomparable level of textual expression and of dramatization achieved purely through musical means. This gift shines brilliantly on the 1988 Hungaroton recording of The Combat of Tancred and Clorinda. The dying Clorinda’s monologue is brought to life with extraordinary clarity, and at her final words (“S’apre il ciel: io vado in pace”), she truly conjures before us a vision of the heavens opening. In the Prologue to Monteverdi’s Orfeo, sung by Musica, critics recognized in Zádori’s performance a masterclass in the Monteverdi style – “through her phrasing of the vocal line, the subtle variety and refinement of her tonal shading, and the perfect fusion of the Italian language, vocal line, and accent” (Géza Fodor).
According to György Kroó, Zádori’s Monteverdi interpretations “radiated the atmosphere of the text – the lyricism of blissful sensual beauty, the passion that intensifies into madness, and the tragic tones of unhappy love and vengeance alike”. Without ever appearing on stage, and without costume, scenery, or acting, she was able to create an unforgettable, dense, and enclosed dramatic atmosphere – whether in Monteverdi or in Haydn’s Arianna a Naxos cantata.
Hungarian musical history is immeasurably enriched by the fact that Mária Zádori – continuing the artistic mission of the Ars Renata ensemble – never turned away from performing early Hungarian music. On the second Hungaroton recording of Pál Esterházy’s Harmonia Caelestis (1991), her tone can best be described by the very epithets used by the prince and palatine in their poems: “dulcis et suavis” – sweet and pleasing. A special item in her discography is the CD Hungarian Songs of the 17th Century (Quintana, 1992). In these simple melodies, the captivating power and unadorned beauty of her voice are revealed most fully. One of the more recent discoveries of Hungarian musicology is the song oeuvre of János Fusz (Johann Evangelist Fuss), born in Tolna. It was a stroke of great fortune that it was Mária Zádori who undertook to introduce and record this musical treasure. In her interpretation, Fusz’s songs not only provide a faithful impression of a minor composer contemporary with Beethoven and Schubert, but illuminate those moments when this short-lived musician could truly attain greatness within the microcosm he created for himself. Again, Zádori’s extraordinary sensitivity to every nuance of the text guides her performance. In the song Die Verlassene an ihr Kind (The Forsaken Woman to Her Child), she condenses the image of a human drama into a few minutes. Not only the articulation, the subtle ebb and flow of pauses and surges, but even the infinitely shaded timbre serve to express the emotional totality of the text – just as they do in the dramatic episodes of Elysium. In truth, every so-called “minor master” deserves the chance to have their art measured by a perfect performance. János Fusz received that chance from Mária Zádori.
Finally, mention must be made of Mária Zádori’s interpretations of Bach – those moments when her voice served not a lesser master, but the works of one of the greatest geniuses in the history of music. She frequently sang Bach with the Capella Savaria and the Orfeo Orchestra and became an indispensable participant in the Bach cantata services, passion and oratorio performances, and Bach Week concerts led by Salamon Kamp. Anyone who has heard her sing the arias of the St. John Passion – the joy of following Christ (Ich folge dir gleichfalls), the grief of mourning Christ (Zerfließe, mein Herze) – will forever hear them in Mária Zádori’s voice, just as Bach’s most playful melody from the sixth cantata of the Christmas Oratorio (Nur ein Wink von seinen Händen) will always bear her timbre in memory. Out of the many cantata performances, it is difficult to single one out, yet the aria Bete aber auch dabei (Pray with perseverance) from Cantata BWV 115 revealed depths and heights of musical prayer that had never before been experienced by its listeners.
The Bach interpretations shed light on the deepest secret of Mária Zádori’s art.
A secret indeed, for it remains unfathomable how the beauty and perfect polish of her voice, the learnable elements of historically informed performance – the ornamentation, the stylistic knowledge – and the unlearnable ones – musical sensitivity, taste, simplicity free of all affectation, and the human gold standard underlying them all – are transmuted into an ethical and moral message.
One might ponder how this exceptional singing career has not received the recognition it truly deserves, the kind measured in awards and world fame. Yet, in the light of the many existing, accessible recordings, this seems of secondary importance. For whoever has ears to hear will recognize that Mária Zádori is one of the greatest Hungarian singers of the 20th and 21st centuries – present in every moment of her performance with modesty, purity, and a sympathetic restraint, attending solely to the music, yet conveying every shade of the wholeness hidden within it. Adding five more talents to the five she was given as her endowment, she has achieved a fully realized life’s work.
[2017]