The dominance of Ferenc Erkel and Franz Liszt in the nineteenth century, Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály and Ernö Dohnányi in the first half of the twentieth century, and the striking exponents of modern composing György Ligeti and György Kurtág causes several significant Hungarian composers to be overlooked. Many of them were important and esteemed at home but for various reasons failed to gain fame outside of Hungary; at most, only individual works have established themselves in the international repertoire. The works for bassoon on this recording impressively demonstrate the versatility of those composers. Bence Bongányi comes from a Hungarian family of musicians. He had his first bassoon lesson with Gyorgy Bokor in Hungary at the age of nine. In Helsinki he continued his studies with Laszlo Hara and then with Jussi Sarkka at the Sibelius Academy. As a ‘Nordplus’ scholar he studied in Malmo with Asger Svendsen, then spent a year studying with He...