PREFACE About the Composer Lajos Delej (pronounced LUH-yosh DELL-ay), also known as Louis or Ludwig Delej, was a German-Hungarian Jewish concert pianist and composer. He was born on December 27, 1923 in Berlin to Imre Delej and Eleanor Kafka Delej and died February 17, 1945 in the Buchenwald concentration camp. He lived the first ten years of his life in Berlin, moving in March of 1934 along with his mother, father, and older sister to Budapest in response to events occurring in Germany related to Hitler’s rise to power. I grew up hearing stories about Delej from my mother. He and my mother met in August 1941 when he attended a house concert in Kolozsvar at the home of one of my mother’s uncles. According to my mother, it was love at first sight for him, and he made good on his promise to court my mother by visiting her frequently in her hometown, Nagybanya. After about a year of courtship, it was clear they were moving toward marriage, but the events of the Holocaust intervened and they were separated. My mother was sent to Auschwitz and Delej was taken to Buchenwald. He never made it out. She survived, eventually married my father, and I was born. I know from the stories I heard as a child that Delej was quite celebrated in his day. My mother said his name appeared in the newspaper frequently, and he often played on Hungarian radio. Despite his success, my mother described him as modest and deferential. He wore a mustache because of a scar from the repair of a cleft lip. He even required false front teeth, probably from the same congenital anomaly. Nevertheless, my mother noted how handsome and tall he was, and how she was the envy of all the girls in the town because of his interest in her. She loved hearing him play the piano and described his playing as noble, refined and elegant. She was particularly fond of his performance of the famous Polonaise in Aß ("Heroic") by Chopin. We know now that Lajos Delej was one of three children. Eleanor Kafka Delej (aka Leonora or Nora), Lajos Delej’s mother, had been married prior to meeting Delej’s father. She had a son, Hillbrich, from this earlier marriage. When she married Imre Delej, Imre adopted Hillbrich as his own. Imre and Eleanor later had their daughter Livia, born on March 14, 1915 and finally Lajos, born a little less than nine years later.
My mother had one opportunity to visit Lajos Delej in his home in Budapest. The Delej family lived in an apartment on the fourth floor of a beautiful building at 4 Pozsonyi Street. Lajos Delej’s father, Imre, had unfortunately died by the time my mother visited. He was a well educated man who hailed from a very cultured and well-to-do family originally from Budapest, and he had added to his wealth by owning a couple of hat factories in Germany just outside of Berlin. My mother was very impressed with the family’s wealth and socioeconomic status. Delej apparently showed my mother an original Rembrandt painting in their home along with other family treasures. The family was mostly secular, though Delej identified the family as Jewish. My mother understood that he might have been better suited to be with a more modern and cultivated woman – and my mother believes that his mother would have more readily approved such a woman – but Lajos Delej apparently preferred my mother’s more provincial background. She had been raised in a more conspicuously Jewish atmosphere, and Delej appeared to delight in participating in the kind of Jewish home life one finds in a small town. One particular story I learned about Lajos Delej was that he had not undergone circumcision as a child in the manner that is customary for Jewish boys. My maternal grandfather spoke with him about the necessity for him to undergo circumcision before he would be allowed to marry my mother. He instantly agreed, though it is not clear if he ever had the chance to undergo the procedure. My mother reports that Delej played many instruments including the saxophone, the accordion and the violin (though my mother would add that he didn’t play the violin well), but piano was his mainstay. He spoke German and Hungarian fluently but was also receiving tutoring in English because his family anticipated he would eventually move to the United States. Tragically, he had a ticket on a steamer traveling from Portugal, but he never made it onto that ship. The information thus far presented is an amalgam of what I had learned from my mother and what I later learned from a journey that began just last year. In response to many years of frustration over not finding information about him, my partner and I made a deliberate trip to the U.S. Holocaust Museum and Memorial in Washington, D.C. on October 9, 2015 and spoke with a knowledgeable staff member who was able to find information about Lajos Delej on their database. The material I received there – together with other resources available on the internet – allowed me to discover that he had living relatives in the United States. His sister Livia had
married Emil Lengyel and left Budapest in 1938. They eventually settled in New York. She had one son, Peter, and Peter had three children: Monica, Kristen (aka Cricket) and Roger. Shortly after learning of them, I sent Peter a letter detailing my relationship with Lajos Delej. His daughter Cricket took a strong interest in the story and began an email correspondence with me that continues to this day. From Cricket, I learned that Lajos Delej was even more noteworthy than I had imagined. I learned he was friends with the late great Hungarian cellist Janos Starker. In fact, Delej had written a Sonata for Cello and Piano and Janos Starker recorded the Scherzo movement of that sonata in 1958 for EMI, though the recording never made it out of the studio until after Starker’s death in 2013 when EMI elected to release a 10-CD compendium of his recordings (Janos Starker - The Warner Legacy). I learned that Péter Bársony, a professional violist at the Franz Liszt Music Academy in Budapest, wrote a doctoral dissertation in 2010 concerning Hungarian musicians and composers who died in the Holocaust. Bársony wrote an entire paragraph in his dissertation devoted to Lajos Delej. Here is its translation: Lajos Delej was a great pianist and composer. As Peter Mura [a well-known Hungarian conductor] said in jest, “he could play five parts at once.” We know next to nothing about his life. In 1942 he attended Laszlo Somogyi’s six-week conductor-training master class. He also worked as a piano accompanist, as the contemporary newspapers reveal. As a music student, he accompanied the violinist Agnes Vadas at a concert organized at the Goldmark Music School on March 5, 1944. He played a Goldmark violin concerto. He was a student of Pál Kadosa. György Ligeti, who became a world-famous composer, was his fellow student and friend, and he considered him to be an exceptional talent, a genius, and he mourned his loss his entire life. He also taught piano; Ferenc Rados was his first student. His piano work, “The Flame,” was performed at concerts in the 1950s, played by the pianist Agnes Katona. Denes Kovacs and Mihaly Bacher played a violin-piano piece, “Adagio” on Hungarian Radio. In 1958, his friend Janos Starker prepared a radio recording of a cello sonata dedicated to him. There is a recording of the “Scherzo” movement by Janos Starker with the pianist Gerald Moore. The scores and Delej’s other works are lost in some unknown place. In 1945, Lajos Delej disappeared without a trace, probably killed by the Arrow Cross.
We now know that he was not killed by the Arrow Cross, but died in Buchenwald of sepsis secondary to an infected frostbite wound on his left foot, just two months before the camp was liberated. Cricket also sent me the two documents featured in this folio: a copy of a concert program from June 1942 devoted to Delej's compositions, and these three piano miniatures, the only sheet music written in his own hand that we currently have.
The June 1942 concert featured the aforementioned Sonata for Cello and Piano played by Janos Starker with Delej at the piano. It also featured songs he had written set to poems by Heinrich Heine. The piano accompanist for those songs was none other than the great pianist and pedagogue György Sebok. The last half of the program was devoted to Lajos Delej's string quartet. Janos Starker was the cellist in that performance as well. About the Music The Three Piano Miniatures were a birthday gift from Delej to his sister Livia Delej Lengyel on the occasion of her 25th birthday, March 14, 1940. The music is technically simple and doesn't convey the mastery of the piano that Lajos Delej seems to have ably demonstrated. Correspondences from Lajos Delej to his sister sent to me by Cricket Lengyel reveal that Delej studied composition with György Faragó (1913-1944). Though not well known outside his native Hungary, Faragó was regarded by no less a luminary than Ernő Dohnányi (18771960) as one of the two important talents in his class at the Franz Liszt Music Academy. The other was György Cziffra(1921-1994), who is now regarded as one of the great pianists of the 20th century. Faragó, like Delej, had Jewish ancestry, so he also died young. It is possible that Delej was studying with Faragó at the time these pieces were written. In a letter dated May 3, 1940 – just two months after sending these Three Piano Miniatures to his sister – Lajos Delej wrote “I’m working very much. I’m quite fond of Faragó. He is one of the nicest boy [sic] I know. I am composing little nice things and the best of them you naturally will get.” We know from other correspondences provided by Cricket Lengyel that Delej played for Faragó his “Intermezzo” in August 1941. According to Delej, Faragó was extremely impressed. Besides these “Three Piano Miniatures” and the aforementioned “Intermezzo”, we are aware of one other solo piano piece, called “The Flame”. According to a newspaper clipping in the Pest Hirlap (December 28, 1943, page 7), “Lajos Delej, pianist and composer, performed his composition ‘The Flame’, on the occasion of [Walter] Gieseking’s visit to Pest. The famous musician loved the piece so much that he inserted it into his repertoire.” Regarding the Three Piano Miniatures, it is very surprising that they are written without titles, tempo markings or dynamic markings. They are like a coloring book needing to be colored. I believe they would serve as an excellent student piece to learn how to color musical phrases. The
freedom we are given as a performer, due to the absence of specific markings, is a breath of fresh air and allows for a wide variety of interpretive choices. Nevertheless, I have been struck by the link between my life and Delej's death. It is understood that if Delej had survived Buchenwald, he and my mother would have married and I would never have been born. I am here only because he is not, and that draws me to tentatively suggest the following idea: If there is such a thing as a soul, mine is somehow connected to his. My mother expressed as much when my growing interest in piano as a child prompted secret thoughts in her that I might be Delej reincarnated. I don't believe that I am reincarnated from Delej, but I wonder what to make of that soul connection. He loved my mother intensely. She was the recipient of that love and turned around later in life to give from her love to me. What exactly gets conveyed through a conduit of love linking two mutually exclusive world lines? These three little piano pieces afford an opportunity to consider this question. My hope when I recorded them without the benefit of hearing anyone else play them was that I would get to demonstrate the very specific and personal way I color them, with the understanding that the way I have come to hear them is informed at least in part by the unique relationship I have to Lajos Delej through my mother. Yet I still believe that the most important coloring application will be the one that you, the reader – the person newly interested in this music – will apply. Thank you for your interest in this story and the music. Robert L. Berkowitz December 13, 2016
Concert programme from June 1924 dedicated to the music of Lejos Delej showing performances of his Violoncello Concerto, five songs based on the poetry of Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), and his string quartet.
A young Pauline Berkowitz, left, with the composer in the city of Nagybanya (now called Baia Mare)
COMPOSER'S MANUSCRIPT
TRANSCRIPTION by Dr. Benjamin Ayotte Ayotte Custom Musical Engravings
To(1) my beloved sister's birthday, the 14th of March, 1940.
Three Piano Miniatures I
(2)
Lajos (Louis) Delej (27.XII.1923 - 17.II.1945 Budapest, Winter 1939
5
9
13
17
(3)
21
25
29
Fine
II
6
11
15
20
(5)
(4)
Fine
III
6
11
3
23
1.
2.
17
28
34
Fine
EDITORIAL NOTES (1) To in the dedication from the original manuscript has been retained, though For is more correct. (2) All grace notes have been slurred to the principal note which they ornament. (3) The manuscript here and throughout showson the fourth eighth-beat, which gives the measure too many beats. In this transcription, the double dot on the quaver–a bold notational choice–has been retained, but the following pitch has been necessarily reduced in duration to a sixty-fourth note (). (4) Same situation as (3) above (5) The manuscript shows
in the right hand of measure 18. The first pitch of
beat 2 is ambiguous: does the composer intend an A5 or a B5 to be performed? In the transcription I opted for the former for three reasons: first, such ornamental figures as this are invariably stepwise; second: that figure is an ornamentation of the G that resolves the passing F# in the melody. In which case the A is analogous to an appoggiatura with the F# and E stepwise continuation to the D on beat 2; third, a B at that point would be dissonant against the prevailing harmony and would definitely not be accentuated by leaping into it.