Bartok: Violin Sonatas Nos. 1 And 2 / Contrasts

Description

Bela Bartok (1881 -1945)Violin Sonata No.1, Sz 75Violin Sonata No.2, Sz 76Contrasts, Sz 111 The Hungarian composer Bela Bartok occupies, as any greatcomposer must, a unique position, his vital musical language inimitable and atonce recognisable. He was born in 1881 in Nagyszentmiklos, in a region of Hungarylater acquired by Romania, the son of the director of a government agriculturalschool, a talented amateur musician. After the latter's death in 1888, thefamily moved, settling first at Nagyszollos, later to form part of Czechoslovakia.For a time Bartok was sent away to school in Nagyvarad, where he lodged withhis mother's sister, later to return to his mother and sister, when progress atthe school seemed inadequate. He had had his first piano lessons from hismother and had shown significant musical interest and promise in these earlyyears. Serious and consistent musical training, however, proved difficult untilhis mother found a position on the teaching staff of a teachers' trainingcollege in Pozsony, then part of Hungary and at one time its capital and now,as Bratislava, the capital of the Slovak Republic. Here Bartok studied withLaszlo Erkel, a son of the distinguished Hungarian composer Ferenc Erkel, whilethe city itself offered opportunities for amateur performance and for hearing concertsand operas. In these years he developed his own very considerable ability as apianist, while composing in a largely derivative style. Completion of hisstudies at school was followed by the decision to embark on professional musicalstudies not in Vienna, where a scholarship was offered, but in Budapest,following the example of his school-fellow Erno Dohnanyi, four years hissenior. In spite of ill health, which had dogged his childhoodand adolescence,Bartok was able, during his earlier years at the Budapest Academy, to devote his attention very largely to performance as a pianist,with some professional engagements. His work as a composer was resumed througha study of recent scores by Richard Strauss and by a growing interest inHungarian national music, a field that had remained unexplored andmisunderstood by composers such as Liszt, whose Hungarian Rhapsodies had reliedon a more German and sophisticated source than the music of the people. Bartok'searly career began as a pianist, after a brief period of study with his friend Dohnanyi,with appearances in Vienna and Berlin. At the same time his first major composition,Kossuth, a hero's life, based on the life of Lajos Kossuth, leader ofthe Hungarian revolt against Austrian suzerainty in 1848, won predictablesuccess at home. His attention as a composer, however, was now drawn toHungarian folk-music in all its amazing regional variety .Into this heundertook considerable research, in collaboration with Zoltan Kodaly. Thisinterest had an overwhelming effect on his composition, allowing him todevelop, in a direction very different from that taken by Kodaly, a musicalidiom that was both fundamentally Hunga