There are many fine Hungarian bands but it sometimes seems that Muzsikás is the only one that World Music has heard of for its festivals and praise. There's nevertheless absolutely no doubt that they deserve high status, and the fact that they've avoided fashion-ligging and made this album (The Bartók Album) shows their class.
Folk Roots


We hear the same folk melody as it sounded 87 years ago, as it sounds in a classical setting and as it sounds Hungary's finest active folk troupe... From any angle, these are inexhaustible themes handled by superb musicians.
The Washington Post



As Hungary's leading folk ensemble, it's only fitting that Muzsikás should investigate the folk connections of Hungary's greatest composer, Béla Bartók... These are great performances of well-chosen music that resonates very deeply." Gramaphone

These seven performers, including two dancers are university-trained musicians. The leader of the group, Daniel Hamar... plays thrumping dance patterns on double bass and delivers deadpan commentaries on the music in English... The ebullient music must have been a shock to anyone who thinks that Hungarian music is gypsy violins...
There were plaintive songs with rhapsodic modal melodies, driving dances that demolished any sense of regular meter, and some fancy fiddle playing over droning accompaniments supplied by kontras (a three-string viola with a flattened bridge and a fingerboard that make it possible to play block chords)... With the memory of this raucously beautiful musical in one's ears, listening to the folk elements of Bartók's works during the next two days was a revelation.
New York Times


Muzsikás - Within each genre that comes to North America as "world music," there is always one group of musicians designated as emissaries, virtually equated with that music for a time. In Hungarian folk circles, that group is Muzsikás.
Washington Post Staff Writer, Richard Harrington

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Some reviews fom the web



The members of Muzsikas express their warm thanks to Judith Frigyesi, professor of the Princeton University for her advises and her help to make the Maramaros, The Lost Jewish Music of Transylvania album and concert program. Professor Frigyesi has written a scientific paper about the importance of our field recordings The Historical Value of the Record ....

The album "Maramaros, the lost Jewish music of Transylvania" increased a huge enquiry by the experts and lovers of traditional Jewish music. One of those is a review from Ari Davidov.

The Bartók Album were praised by classical reviewist, like Len Mullenger who gave the maximum, 5-star in his review.

Daniel Schlosberg reviewed the "Bartok Album" in the Baltimore City Paper.You can read it here.



Brendan Foreman, who reviewed also Bartok: Yugoslav Folk Music reviewed our Bartok Album in Green Man Review.

Our concert in Freiburg, Germany was reviewed in the Badischen Zeitung by Christian Rath. You can read it in German here.

A detailed information page of Muzsikas appeared in French language in ETHNOTEMPOS titled "Muzsikas Un Air de Village" You can find it here.

Folk Virtuosos in Bartok's Footsteps. A review was written by Lou Wigdor about our Bartok concert in the New England Conservatory, Boston, MA, here.

The Takacs/Muzsikas joint concerts was reviewed. The first concert was in Pittsburg, in the beautiful Carnegie Music Hall on the 26th of March 2003. The review were published in Pittsburgh Post Gazette on March 28 by Jane Vanish, Bartok tribute is a stroke of brillance.

The other review titled Taste or more of Hungary by Susan Isaacs Nisbett is about our concerts in Ann Arbor is here .

The Muzsikas-BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra joint concert in Glasgow:
7 March 2004, Tramway Theatre
The rewiew was publishen in The Herald (Glasgow) and got four stars from four. from Michael Tumelty, A Hair-Raising Brew: BBC Scottish Symphony ad Folk Group Muzsikas Explore Bartók's Roots.