Bartok: Out Of Doors / Ten Easy Pieces / Allegro Barbaro

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Cat No: 8555329

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Release Date: 01 January 2004

Label: Naxos / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 747313532926

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: BARTOK

Description
Bela Bartok (1881-1945)Piano Music, Volume 3The Hungarian composer Bela Bartok was born in 1881 in aregion that now forms part of Romania. His father, director of an agriculturalcollege, was a keen amateur musician, while it was from his mother that Bartokreceived his early piano lessons. The death of his father in 1888 led to a lesssettled existence, as his mother resumed work as a teacher, eventually settlingin the present capital of Slovakia, Bratislava (the Hungarian Poszony), whereBartok passed his early adolescence, counting among his school-fellows thecomposer Erno Dohnanyi. Offered the chance of musical training in Vienna, likeDohnanyi he chose instead Budapest, where he won a considerable reputation as apianist, being appointed to the teaching staff of the Academy of Music in 1907.At the same time he developed a deep interest, shared with his compatriotZoltan Kodaly, in the folk-music of his own and adjacent countries, laterextended as far as Anatolia, where he collaborated in research with the Turkishcomposer Adnan Saygun.As a composer Bartok found acceptance much more difficult,particularly in his own country, which was, in any case, beset by politicaltroubles when the brief post-war left-wing government of Bela Kun was replacedby the reactionary regime of Admiral Horthy. Meanwhile his reputation abroadgrew, in particular among those with an interest in contemporary music, and hissuccess both as a pianist and as a composer, coupled with dissatisfaction atthe growing association between the Horthy government and National SocialistGermany, led him in 1940 to emigrate to the United States of America.In his last years, after briefly held teaching appointmentsat Columbia and Harvard, Bartok suffered from increasing ill-health, and from apoverty that the conditions of exile in war-time could do nothing to alleviate.He died in straitened circumstances in 1945, leaving sketches for a new ViolaConcerto and a more nearly completed Third Piano Concerto. The years inAmerica, whatever difficulties they brought, also gave rise to importantcompositions, including the Concerto for Orchestra, commissioned by theKoussevitzky Foundation, and a Sonata for Solo Violin for Yehudi Menuhin.As a pianist Bartok had had a number of teachers in theyears before his mother settled in Bratislava. There he became a pupil ofLaszlo Erkel, son of the well-known Hungarian opera-composer Ferenc Erkel, andafter his teacher's death in 1896, of Anton Hyrtl, acquiring from both aknowledge of piano repertoire and of traditional compositional techniques. InBudapest his piano teacher was Istvan Thoman, a pupil of Liszt, and hiscomposition teacher the traditionalist Hans Koessler. From the early 1890s, at least,Bartok had written music for the piano, a series of works that remainunpublished, a fate that he might have preferred for his Four Pieces, publishedin 1904. He continued to write for the piano until he left for America in 1940,including among these compositions works for c
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