Release Date: 12 January 1999
Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 4891030504516
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: BARTOK
Description
Bela Bartok (1881 - 1945)The Hungarian composer Bela Bartok was born in 1881 in anarea that now forms part of Romania. His father, director of an agricultural college, wasa keen amateur musician, while it was from his mother that he received his early pianolessons. The death of his father in 1889 led to a less settled existence, when his motherresumed work as a teacher, eventually settling in the Slovak capital of Bratislava (theHungarian Pozsony), where Bartok passed his early adolescence, counting among hisschool-fellows the composer Erno Dohnanyi. Offered the chance of musical training inVienna, like Dohnanyi he chose instead Budapest, where he won a considerable reputationas a pianist, being appointed to the teaching staff of the Academy of Music in 1907. Atthe same time he developed a deep interest, shared with his compatriot Zoltan Kodaly, inthe folk-music of his own and of adjacent countries, later extended as far as Anatolia,where he collaborated in research with the Turkish composer Adnan Sayg??n.As a composer Bartok found acceptance much more difficult,particularly in his own country, which was, in any case, beset by political troubles, whenthe brief post-war left-wing government of Bela Kun was replaced by the reactionaryregime of Admiral Horthy. Meanwhile his reputation abroad grew, particularly among thosewith an interest in contemporary music, and his success both as a pianist and as acomposer, coupled with dissatisfaction at the growing association between the Horthygovernment and National Socialist Germany, led him in 1940 to emigrate to the UnitedStates of America.In his last years, after briefly holding teaching appointmentsat Columbia and Harvard, Bartok suffered from increasing ill-health, and from povertywhich the conditions of exile in war-time could do nothing to alleviate. He died instraitened circumstances in 1945, leaving a new Viola Concerto incomplete and a thirdPiano Concerto more nearly finished.The Allegro barbaroof 1911, published in 1918, its very title a provocation, is a work of savage energy,firmly rooted in Magyar folk-dance. It marked a departure for Bartok from a style thatshowed the more overt influence of Debussy and, in Hungarian terms, of Liszt. Four yearsearlier he had arranged the Three Hungarian Folksongsfrom the Csik District, collected in Transylvania and making use of melodies he had heardplayed on the shepherd's pipe, the tilinko. The FifteenHungarian Peasant Songs were arranged between 1914 and 1918 and were publishedin 1920. The work is made up of four groups, the first consisting of four old tunes, thefifth piece a Scherzo and the sixth a Ballad, in the form of a theme of asymmetricalrhythm and variations. The work is completed with a group of nine old dance-tunes.Bartok wrote his Sonatina in 1915 and it was published inHungary in 1919. The work makes use of folk-tunes, presented, in general, in their moststraightforward form. The Bagpipers of the first movement, with its irregularities ofrhyth
Tracklisting
Dariia Lytvishko
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Marin Alsop
Alice Di Piazza; Basel Sinfonietta; NDR Bigband; Titus Engel
Anna Alas i Jove; Miquel Villalba
David Childs; Black Dyke Band; Nicholas Childs
Grazer Philharmoniker
Zenz:Cathariou:Iacovidou
Zahir Ensemble
