It is said that everyone’s life can read as a novel. Marta Hidy’s life could read as several novels.
Hidy, one of the driving forces for turning the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra into a professional ensemble, died on Thursday November 4, aged 83, succumbing to bone cancer. Over a lengthy career which began in her native Hungary and ended in Hamilton, Hidy made her musical mark not only as a critically acclaimed classical violinist who won the undying respect of colleagues, but also as an educator influencing countless budding musicians.
Boris Brott, music director of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra from 1969-1990, has many fond memories of Hidy having first known her in Winnipeg where she’d been concertmaster of the CBC orchestra before taking up that chair in Hamilton.
“Marta was an extraordinary musician, a natural violinist, and a wonderful teacher, a person who exuded music from her every pore,” recalled Brott. “I was fortunate to have benefited for over a quarter of a century of making music together with this woman. She’s someone who’s made herself the fabric of my musical being.”
When Brott arrived in Hamilton, Hidy was “the one resident professional musician in the HPO.” According to Brott, Hidy “was very much part of the fabric of creating all that, and it (a professional HPO) was built around her.” Hidy also served as the HPO’s assistant conductor where she not only “worked hand in glove” with Brott during the early years of his tenure, but soloed in works such as Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and Brahms’s Double Concerto with cellist Janos Starker.
Hidy was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1927. She picked up the violin at age 5 and studied at the Franz Liszt Academy, receiving world class training with violinists Ferenc Gabriel and Ede Zathureczky, plus chamber music and folklore instruction with Leo Weiner and Zoltan Kodaly respectively. In 1943, she won the Academy’s Remenyi Competition with Ernst von Dohnanyi heading up the jury. Her prize was a handmade violin. Upon completion of her studies, she embarked on a career that included orchestral and chamber performances as well as international solo appearances.
On New Year’s Eve 1956, Hidy, her husband and their seven year old son and five year old daughter fled communist Hungary in a daring nighttime escape over the border to Austria, her violin and a concert gown plus needle and thread in her luggage. From Austria, Hidy and her family immigrated to Canada, settling in Winnipeg where she became assistant concertmaster of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, and established the Hidy String Quartet and Hidy Trio.
After her scintillating performance of Bartok’s Second Violin Concerto with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Hidy moved with her family to Hamilton where in 1965 she became one of the founding members of McMaster University’s music department as professor of violin. According to Hidy’s son, there were four students in the music program that year including Ivan Reitman who would go on to fame as a film producer and director. As she had done in Winnipeg, Hidy quickly enriched Hamilton’s musical landscape. With assistance from the HPO’s Women’s Committee as well as local arts supporter Larry Paikin, Hidy was instrumental in bringing the Suzuki string method to Hamilton. For ten years from 1967, she served as artistic director of the Philharmonic Children of Hamilton, Inc.
Hidy was also highly active in the chamber music field, forming the Hidy-Ozolins-Tsutsumi Trio, the Ensemble Sir Ernest MacMillan, the McMaster String Quartet, Trio Canada with cellist Zdenek Konicek and pianist Valerie Tryon, and lastly, Hidy and Friends which ran until her retirement in 2003.
“She was a fine musician and violinist with a sense of leadership and dedication to the music,” wrote Tryon of Hidy.
In 1974, McMaster’s Dr. Alan Walker put on an Arnold Schoenberg Centennial Festival and had Hidy perform the demanding Phantasy op. 47. She played it from memory, and even confounded Schoenberg’s pupil, secretary and distant relative Richard Hoffmann as to how she had correctly played the harmonics notated in the score.
“Her sound was unique,” said violinist Michael Schulte, one of Hidy’s students and later a chamber music colleague who was deeply influenced by her. “Some would say that there was too much Hungarian goulash in there, but frankly, she had an old fashioned, real musicality that you didn’t hear much anymore these days. She really had a sense of how to play from the soul, to feel the music in a very natural way.”
That natural way could be heard on her weekly live recital broadcasts out of CBC Winnipeg, and later on CBC Records. Her discography includes works by Franck, Grieg, Debussy, Ravel, Bloch, Bartok, Kodaly as well as Canadian composers Murray Adaskin, Harry Somers, Oskar Morawetz, and Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté.
She was as demanding a musician as she was an educator, always striving for excellence. Those who knew Hidy privately spoke of her warmth and hospitality.
“She was a strong and courageous woman--vital and energetic--always lovely and elegant--a wonderful hostess, caring and attentive to her guests as she was to her audiences,” wrote Tryon. “Her attitude to life was always optimistic. When some kind of problem or disaster occurred in her life, she would come up smiling, and say it was the best thing that could have happened.”
Hidy was a fifteen year breast cancer survivor, but bone cancer had been detected a few years ago. With some difficulty, she returned to Budapest this September to attend a celebratory event recognizing the diamond anniversary of her graduation from the FLA.
On October 29 she was rushed to McMaster Hospital after fracturing her right arm in a fall at home. She passed away surrounded by her son and his wife, her recordings as well as Canadian violinist James Ehnes’s Bach CD playing in the background.
Predeceased by her husband Antal (Tony) Dvorak who was a great grand-nephew of famed Czech composer Antonin Dvorak, Hidy is survived by her children, John Dvorak of Toronto and Marta Dvorak-Chézaud of Paris, France, as well as 6 grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren. A funeral mass will be held on Friday, November 12 at 11 a.m. in St. Stephen’s Hungarian R.C. Church on 134 Barton St. E., with former Hamilton mayor Bob Morrow serving as organist.
The HPO will dedicate this Saturday's Masterworks concert in her memory.
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