The Suite in F sharp minor… is a particularly attractive work, brimful of lovely melodies and imaginative orchestral touches… Domonkos Héja and the youthful Danubia Symphony Orchestra relish its many opportunities for soloistic virtuosity… In Ruralia Hungarica, Dohnányi pursued a more overtly nationalist stance... a feature that is also prevalent in the later American Rhapsody. Once again Héja and his excellent orchestra deliver enthusiastic and expressive performances of both works...

Good to have Dohnányi delivered in bright, local packaging. The substantial Suite, Op 19, revisits Brahmsian vistas, the string-writing especially, and at around the seven-minute mark into the sizeable theme-and-variations first movement there's a vivid premonition of Bartók and Bluebeard's cache of jewels (put together some 10 years later). Clean, incisive, light in texture – Héja's still-young orchestra is all of these and projects a subtly individual personality, at once grainy and slimline, if not yet quite the equal of Iván Fischer's more colourful Budapest Festival band. The Danubia's playing of the Suite's Scherzo (echoes of the Russian late-Romantics) and momentarily Mahlerian finale is quite brilliant, whereas the strings do very nicely in the exotic Romanza slow movement.
The somewhat later suite Ruralia hungarica is less 'earth under the fingernails' (which is what Bartók and Kodály were offering) than peasant life spied from the business lounge. The suite's lyrical centrepiece is the dusky, rhapsodic Adagionon troppo, widely known out of context as a 'Gypsy Andante'. If you don't immediately recognise it, be patient: the big theme sweeps in at around the two-minute mark. The more memorable of the fast movements, pungently played here, is the pentatonic Presto with its coincidental echoes of American-Indian music, while the finale is charmingly childlike in its simplicity.
How different the relatively late and infinitely more complex American Rhapsody, a melange of traditional tunes woven into a contrapuntal tapestry that would have made even Reger green with envy. Good to hear once or twice, especially when played with conviction and just a touch of wistfulness – which is how it's played here. Good sound.

Clean incisive, light in texture - Héja's still-young orchestra is all of these and projects a subtly individual personality, at once grainy and slimline… The Danubia's playing of the Suite's Scherzo (echoes of the Russian late-Romantics) and momentarily Mahlerian finale is quite brilliant, whereas the strings do very nicely in the exotic Romanza slow movement.