Back to intensive Pecs training/Purely ornamental Pecs

This post will conclude with the obligatory next stage in our journey through Hungarian history, but first I will address the question that is no doubt on everyone's lips: has my piano teacher broken my spirit yet? What well-timed barbs has he aimed at me to shatter what's left of my faith in my abilities? Have I smashed my piano in a fit of desperation and taken holy orders, resolving never to return to Hungary?

To my surprise, it's actually going well! I think the non-debacle of my concert last February was a turning point and has led to some grudging gestures of respect on the part of "Bela." In fact, in the fall he invited me to join him in giving a series of concerts in smaller towns throughout Hungary, the first of which took place in the bustling vacation town of Siofok on Lake Balaton. Bela tossed off a lengthy improvisation in the style of Rachmaninoff like it was nothing, while I expended considerably more energy playing a Liszt piece and Beethoven Sonata, quite well I thought.

At our lesson the next week, Bela, master of the left-handed compliment, opened with this gem: "Andrew, you played the Liszt as well as anyone could have on that terrible piano. Now, the Beethoven on the other hand..." Well played Bela, well played. During the two hours that followed, all the old fan favorites made an appearance: 

• "are you satisfied with that?" 
• "where are the colors?"
• "It's boring!"
• "You missed a note on page 7!"
• And the perennial favorite, "Your thumbs are still lazy!"

To this excellent roster Bela has now added a few more starting players, my favorite of which is as follows: when I get to a particularly difficult passage in the Liszt pieces I'm currently learning and he knows so well, he rapidly approaches the piano, leans forward, and gazes intently first at my hands, then at the score, his eyes darting back and forth in hopes of catching me cutting corners. I find this disconcerting.

Bela was recently away giving concerts in Japan and Switzerland (he is apparently beloved in countries valuing precision), so during those weeks I visit an emeritus professor in his elegant fin de siecle apartment. A diminutive, bespectacled figure, said professor shuffles to the door, greets me in fractured German, offers me a pair of Hausschuhe, and the lesson begins. The emeritus professor draws upon his decades of experience (he is 86), mountains of scores, and meticulously labeled music recordings to offer sage counsel strangely devoid of the emotional abuse I've come to accept as my lot in life. Perhaps he would also like to crush my soul, but his limited German precludes such action (kind of a shame, really, since German would offer plenty of possibilities).

In between lessons much of my time is spent practicing on Bela's old piano at his parents' house in a neighboring town. These experiences are always memorable: the harrowing bus ride (all Hungarians revert to marauding horseman mentality when behind the wheel), the trepidatious walk through the grim remnants of a communist coal mining town, and finally the glorious emergence into the garden of Eden of his parents' humble country home. Both in their eighties, they don't speak a word of English but their eyes communicate the same familial warmth lurking somewhere behind their son's oh so hurtful words. We manage to communicate through my limited grasp of Hungarian, sign language, and meaningful grunts. Lunch always consists of fresh vegetables from the garden, and I am always sent home with bags of tomatoes and peppers.

I have also managed to interact a bit with the youth of Hungary, and am surprised to learn they know more about American sports than I do; granted, that's a low bar. When people learn I am from Seattle they always ask if I like the Seahawks, to which I always respond, "Do I! That's Errol Flynn's greatest swashbuckler! Wait, he did more than one?" Baseball, however, remains a hard sell, mainly because no one has any idea what's going on. I recently had a conversation where a Youngarian (if you will) was describing what I eventually realized was this sort of scenario:

In classic deadpan (the accent really makes it), he concluded by asking, "This is a sport?"

Anyway, back to the history of these bemused, beleaguered people. As a refresher, when we left off the Hungarians had endured 150 years of the Turks doing this to them:

Mmm...tender.

There's only so much of that sort of treatment a proud Hungarian can endure, so it is no surprise that efforts to liberate the country persisted throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. Finally, the failed Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683 provided the impetus to push the Turks out of the country for good. By this point the portions of Hungary that had not been subjugated by the Turks had been incorporated into the Habsburg Empire, and the Austrians found themselves faced with two big problems: The Turks left behind a largely depopulated, undeveloped country, and the few Hungarians who were left had converted to Protestantism.

The solution to the first problem was easy: who better to repopulate and build than the industrious Germans? The call was sent out, and soon German settlers, often from Swabia, were floating down the Danube on makeshift rafts; to this day there are large groups of Donauschwaben living in Hungary, in Pécs in particular.

The solution to the second problem was to bring in Catholic monastic orders and architects to erect a whole host of Baroque churches and monasteries, and these still dot the Hungarian countryside to this day. Here, in no particular order, are some of the highlights found in Pécs:

 St. Francis of Xavier Church, built by the Jesuits in 1739

Church of Saint Augustine, built by the Franciscans in 1710

Saint Francis of Assisi, 1718-1760. Formerly a mosque, located near the ruins of the Turkish baths

Church of Our Lady of the Snows, 1697. Built to commemorate plague of 1690-1691

Lyceum Church, built by the Hungarian Paulite Order, 1741-1756

It's going to be hard to say goodbye to all these beautiful buildings, but I'm fortunate to enjoy them on a daily basis now. In the next installment we'll look at some more impressive buildings from the next century, and I'll try to document some more run-ins with these magical Magyars.