Some of you know that I am studying at the Kodaly Institute in Hungary for the next nine months.

I wanted to say that I have now arrived and so far am having a great time........oh I forgot.....the hard work hasn't started yet so might not be saying that in a couple of weeks time!

I will post from time to time to let you know how things are progressing.

Good Luck Hammerklavier Enjoy yourself

Wow Hammer that's wonderful. Where in Hungary are you? What's the accomodation like? The food? My teacher was from Budapest (Liszt Academy - she heard Kodaly lecture once)! How are you managing with the language? I've heard it's related to Mongolian and doesn't bear any relationship to any other European language except Finnish! Yikes...

Send us some pics!

Violinia

In case he doesn't get to his computer for a few days, I'll answer a bit for him, Violinia!

He's at the Kodaly Institute in Kecskemet (Kodaly's birthplace) - a beautiful town and the Institute itself is housed in an old monastery and is equally beautiful. He's actually living in the Institute - his own room with its own piano!

As for the language - it belongs to the Finno-Ugric group but actually bears very little resemblance to Finnish. In fact it's just not like any other language and is very hard to learn! (Perhaps rosfrog might have some linguistic observations to make here???)

Anyway, he is a very lucky boy to be doing this and let's hope he posts some pics soon!

Btw, there is a rather fetching pic of HK knocking around in mags like Classical Music and Music Teacher in the AB's advert for the CT course - hobnobbing with two ladies comme d'habitude

Is this where the pianist Prof. Jeno Jando works ? I have loads of his recordings on the budget Naxos label and some arent half bad. His Bach '48' nis ertainly acceptable, and his recording of all the Haydn sonatas

Heh heh that doesn't surprise me!

Violinia

Good Luck Hammer Klavier!

It does indeed look very strange. I went to a conference in Hungary last year and couldn't even decipher my train ticket sufficently to work out which number was my seat number!

Most young people speak English and the older ones German and Russian. I guess if you can speak those languages you can get by fairly easily without knowing any Hungarian.

Unfortunately I speak English, French and Spanish so very often had to resort to sign language.

Oh but doesn't it SOUND wonderful!

It's very weird, if you're a linguist, to hear or read a language which you can't even begin to start to unravel at all, or even say "hello" in. I'd love to go there just for that novelty

Anyway, nuff from the language freaks - looking forward to hearing more, HK!

Thank you to those of you who have posted. The hard studying work begins next week after our week of excursions this past week.

I will post from time to time to let you know how things are going.

Good luck HK - your country needs YOU

[insert smilie with handlebar moustache and pointy finger]

.... to come back and teach us wot can't sing how to sound like Bryn Terfel

You'll need to Cyrilla to show you how to do that! I am only a mere mortal!!

EEEEEP!!!!! Without the operation there's no way I can sound like Bryn Terfel!!!!!!!!!!!