I. Entrée en rondo. Vivace
II. Marche sév?re et variations plaisantes (Strict march and amusing variations) Allegro maestoso
III. Valses nobles et sentimentales (Nobvle and sentimental waltzes)
IV. Premier finale (First finale). Allegro
V. La ritournelle. Allegretto
VI. Le chant de la nuit (The song of the night). Molto quieto
VII. Lazzi. Prestissimo
VIII. Intermezzo. Moderato
IX. Second finale. Vivace

László Lajtha (1892–1963) was elected member of the French Academy in 1955, the first Hungarian composer to receive the honour, partly in reward for his courageous resistance in the face of dictatorships. A parody of Adolf Hitler, The Grove of the Four Gods (1943) was composed as a political statement. (From 1944 onwards Lajtha served as commander of an armed unit in the national resistance movement, and saved many Jews from deportation by providing hiding places and fake documents.)

As the librettist József Révay (1881–1970), a classical scholar, recalled, they had sought to create the genre of ‘political ballet’ with the aim of ‘educating and fostering awareness’, ‘revealing […] the tragicomedy of spinelessness.’ The story is set in the ‘laurel forest by Mount Lycabettus in Athens’ where two human girls make the statues of Zeus and Hermes come to life. Aphrodite and Ares, too, surrender to the joys of love. Cleon, the demagogue statesman of Athens, takes Zeus’s place. Aphrodite’s cuckolded husband imprisons his wife and Ares. Zeus restores divine order, rescues the lovers, recaptures his throne, and the grove of the four gods bursts into bloom.

The ballet has not been staged for seven decades, and neither has the music been played. The score remains unpublished. Created from the ballet, the four-movement Suite no. 2 was premi?red by János Ferencsik, a pupil of Lajtha’s, in Budapest in 1953, and was performed with much success around Europe from the late 1950s onwards.

Emőke Solymosi Tar