A Bartók conversion
Do other listeners share the experience of being completely baffled by a piece of music at first hearing, wondering if they could ever follow it, let alone like it, then after an interval hearing it again and finding it made sense and spoke to them? This was my experience of Bartók. At school I had the good fortune to have the composer and (later) broadcaster Christopher Headington as one of my music teachers. Sensing the rare chance of a borrowed record player and a bit of privacy to listen, I once asked him what I should try and he sent me away with the old Vegh Quartet LP of the last two Bartók quartets and the scores.
I had lost the place and all comprehension by the end of page one. A couple of years later I was in my first job as a music librarian, with the run of Shropshire’s recordings and scores, including that very Bartók. It was a revelation and the beginning of a lifelong devotion to the composer. Your 75th-anniversary special in the September issue was a treat.