Unknown Bartók
Six gems to discover
Cantata profana (1930)
Premiered by the BBC Symphony in 1934, the Cantata profana, subtitled ‘The Nine Enchanted Stags’, sets Bartók’s own Hungarian translation of two Romanian Christmas folk tales and tells the story of two sons who, transformed into stags, refuse their fathers’ pleas to return home. The music is unsettling in places, majestic and touching in others.
Piano Quintet (1904)
This early chamber work is Bartók finding his feet after becoming fascinated by Richard Strauss’s music. Unmistakeably late-romantic in style, the Quintet dogged the young composer for a while – audiences found it more appealing than many of his other chamber works and he threatened to destroy it.
Kossuth (1903)
This tone poem is another Straussian early piece – Bartók met Strauss at the Budapest premiere of Also sprach and was ‘aroused as by a flash of lightning’. Kossuth is a memorial to politician Lajos Kossuth and his failed Hungarian Revolution of 1848 that sought to overthrow
Austrian rule. The music is full of dramatic detail, including a parody of the Austrian national anthem, a vivid battle and desolate final bars.
Suite Op. 14 (1916)
This set of four skittering miniatures was written during Bartók’s self-exile in Hungary – his despair at his country’s intolerance of progressive music and the breakdown of his first marriage no doubt plays into the overall mood. Following three quicker movements, the suite finishes on a reflective note.
For Children Sz 42 (1909)
Bartók’s collection of short pieces for children was originally published in four volumes and contained 85 pieces – by the 1930s, Bartók had made considerable revisions, writing 13 new pieces and reducing the whole collection to 79. Each is designed to be played by a beginner with no stretches bigger than an octave, and each draws on either a Hungarian or Slovakian folk song.
The Wooden Prince (1916)
Taking its cue from the opening to Wagner’s Das Rheingold, Bartók’s ballet creeps into view before exploring the tale’s mystical qualities with music of imaginative textures and moods. It tells the story of a princess who falls in love with the wooden facsimile of an infatuated prince. Bartók hones in on the prince’s devastation and his realisation that love isn’t always what it seems. You can hear the swirling, dizzying effects that went on to define much of the composer’s orchestral work. rhythms and astringent soundworlds of works such as the Out of Doors suite for piano (see page 6), the Allegro Barbaro and the ballet The Miraculous Mandarin. The explicit subject matter of the latter provoked, like The Rite of Spring, a scandal all of its own upon its premiere in 1926.
Bartók’s bent for experimentation was ever present, whether in instrumentation (what could be more unexpected than string orchestra, percussion and celesta?) or his writing for it (the timpani can play glissandos!), or his approach to more conventional forces – notably in his six string quartets (see also page 7).
THE MUSIC:
String Quartet No. 4
The String Quartet No. 4, written in 1928, exemplifies Bartók in exploratory mode. The five-movement arch structure may derive from Beethoven, but is informed by Bartók’s fascination with mathematics. Moreover, with whole-tone language, glissandos, pentatonic scales and the distinctive pizzicato in which the string rebounds against the instrument (‘Bartók pizzicato’), he extends the language for these four instruments at every turn. Recommended recording:
Belcea Quartet (Warner Classics 394 4002)
The perfectionist
Bartók was at the peak of his powers in the late 1920s and across the ’30s, his mature style displaying sharp outlines, unusual colours, deep-delving sonic experiments and an expertly wielded pacing of tension. A sense of perfectionism informed by the neo-classicism of the 1920s comes into vivid focus. These works included the violin rhapsodies, the Piano Concerto
No. 2, the Cantata profana (its story hinting almost prophetically at the exile that lay ahead), the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, and the piano teaching goldmine that is Mikrokosmos.
Perhaps perfectionism was a manifestation of Bartók’s integrity. He was horrified by the rise of the Nazis and the allying of Hungary to Hitler; it even annoyed him that the Nazis’ 1937 ‘Entartete Kunst’ exhibition – throwing hatred and ridicule at ‘degenerate’ art – had not included him in its music section. Bartók’s unambiguous attitudes left him open to political attack in Hungary and
Peter, who was a schoolboy at the time, put it simply: ‘The world around us was losing its mind. To my father the situation was becoming unbearable.’ Bartók advised him to study English: ‘You may need it yet.’
Bartók’s successes in America beckoned with an alternative; a tour to the US in
1940 gave him the chance to explore potential for emigration. Later that year he and Ditta left Hungary for New York. He never saw his homeland again.
THE MUSIC:
Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion
In the Sonata for Two Pianos and
Percussion Bartók’s imagination for unusual timbres seems infinite, yet there is no note or sonority too many, and the percussion instruments are wielded with extraordinary lyricism. The piece is in three movements, almost like a Mozart sonata, and its open-hearted ebullience gives little sense of the troubles of the time. He and Ditta were the pianists in its 1938 premiere in Basel, with the percussionsists Fritz Schiesser and Philipp Rühlig. Recommended recording:
Cédric Tiberghien & François-frédéric Guy (pianos), Colin Currie & Sam Walton (percussion) (Hyperion CDA68153)
Bartók’s exile
Life as an immigrant in the US proved far from straightforward. ‘One cannot fill one’s stomach with “world fame”,’ Bartók told Peter. A research fellowship at Columbia University, working on a collection of Serbo-croation folk songs, was a valuable support in what otherwise could be a hand-to-mouth existence. Moreover, Bartók was bothered by the noise levels of New York. In their last home, on West 57th Street, the sensitive composer used to run the shower to block out the street noise. He was, besides, experiencing some alarming physical symptoms, notably a raised temperature – the first signs of fatal leukaemia.
The end of World War II should have provided new hope, impetus and ideas
A commission from the conductor
Serge Koussevitzky turned the tide, paying Bartók $1,000 for a large-scale work for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Summer trips out of New York to a cottage on Saranac Lake gave him the peace he needed to write, as well as the chance to regain his health – at least temporarily; the result was the Concerto for Orchestra.
The end of World War II should have provided new hope, impetus and ideas – and Bartók had lived long enough to see the liberation of his favourite city, Paris. Indeed, though suffering bouts of illness, he had been enjoying a creative Indian summer, producing the Violin Concerto
No. 2, the Sonata for Solo Violin for Yehudi Menuhin, the Piano Concerto No. 3, written as a birthday present for Ditta (three or four concert engagements for her would, he noted, add up to the same as a healthy commission fee) and the Viola Concerto, commissioned by William Primrose. Both these last concertos were not quite complete upon his death.
After a final summer at Saranac Lake, his leukaemia caught up with him. On 21 September 1945 he went into the West Side Hospital and died five days later. On his deathbed he told his doctor: ‘My greatest regret is that I am leaving with a full trunk.’ THE MUSIC:
Concerto for Orchestra
In this irrepressible, multifaceted work, every section of the orchestra is treated as a virtuoso participant. Its five movements span a plethora of emotions, from the dread of the opening to the earthy grace of the ‘game of couples’ and the third movement’s apparent reminiscence of the Lake of Tears frombluebeard’s Castle. Arguments still rage over the nature of a sardonic pillory of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 in the fourth movement, quoting the Russian composer’s own quote from Lehár’s
The Merry Widow, which is greeted by trombone raspberries. Premiered on 1 December 1944, the work enjoyed critical success and The Boston Herald described it as ‘the composer’s masterpiece’. Recommended recording:
Chicago Symphony Orchestra/georg Solti (Decca 478 4577 )