Reiner, Brahms, and the American Hungarian Studies Foundation’s “Night at the Symphony”

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
In April 1956, August J. Molnar and the Board of Directors of the American Hungarian Studies Foundation approached the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Music Director Fritz Reiner with a request. The Foundation, in its second year of activity, intended to purchase a significant number of seats for a “Night at the Symphony,” for which they hoped Reiner would program a “concert of music by Hungarian composers” during the orchestra’s 1956-1957 season. Hungarian-American conductor Fritz Reiner had been a student of Béla Bartók’s and was known for his promotion of his former teacher’s works, but his reputation was not built on a particular specialization in conducting all-Hungarian concerts. Regardless, when the request from the Foundation crossed his desk, he agreed. As the concert date in March 1957 approached, however, Reiner seemed to have forgotten this commitment—instead of a program featuring music by multiple Hungarians, not a single Hungarian composer’s work was represented in the repertoire list. When alerted to this error by orchestra manager George Kuyper, Reiner responded immediately with a compromise—he added a few of Brahms’s Hungarian Dances, originally planned for another concert that month, to the program. Based, in part, on examination of Reiner’s correspondence with his orchestra manager, this paper seeks to illuminate one of the early cultural activities of the American Hungarian Studies Foundation before its move from the Chicago suburbs to New Brunswick, New Jersey, while also considering the significance of Reiner’s programming change to satisfy his commitment to the Foundation’s request.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Sarah M. Lucas is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. She completed her PhD in musicology at the University of Iowa in 2018. Her dissertation, “Fritz Reiner and the Legacy of Béla Bartók’s Orchestral Music in the United States,” is based on archival research carried out in the U.S. and Hungary, where she conducted research with the support of a Fulbright Award. She serves as an AHEA Board Member-At-Large and co-chair of the AHEA conference program committee’s Music and Folklore area. Since Fall 2022 she has served as an Associate Editor for Hungarian Cultural Studies.