The problems with Western democracy: from a Hungarian in 1979

Sometimes the outsider’s perspective is the most valuable

I mentioned in a previous post that I had been reading an entertaining memoir from the Hungarian-born conductor Antal Doráti (1906-1988).

Now I am guessing virtually no one reading this has even heard of Antal Doráti. I barely had myself until recently, despite having an extensive collection of classical recordings, including a few of his.

Doráti was a hard taskmaster and perfectionist who often rubbed his orchestras up the wrong way in his search for the right sounds.

Having found the book, which was published in 1979, in a charity shop for a few quid, I was enjoying it mostly for his thoughts on music and for his lively recollections of growing up in Hungary in the early twentieth-century. This was time of turmoil, of war and revolution but also a great time for music (Doráti worked with two of the giants of Hungarian music-making of that time in learning his trade, Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály).   

Now, as the book goes on, it falls into that trap that many memoirs of professional life do – of a succession of events, people met, things done, positives emphasised over negatives. So I started skipping passages, stopping only to read things like his fascinating discussion of the London orchestral scene, with its five symphony orchestras perpetually under threat of ‘rationalisation’ and dissolution.

However I was startled when at one point Doráti launches himself into an extended discussion of the nature of democratic society in relation to Sweden of all places.

At first I was thinking, ‘give us a break, Antal. This is not your subject matter.’

But, as he went on, I started to realise that he was making some serious and seriously interesting points about democracy and also about Sweden, with serious relevance to the present day.