Leo Weiner taught at the Liszt academy in Budapest for over half a century. He taught continual generations of Hungary’s leading performers, and earned his country’s premier awards. Weiner’s composition career shot him into stardom with his creative use of tone colors, instrumentation, and intense emotion. He viewed Csongor and Tunde as his masterpiece and its incidental music later took independent form as a ballet, which is heard on this recording in its final 1959 version. The Ballad, Op 28, stems from an earlier piece for clarinet and piano.