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Being Bela Bartok


There’s a freedom to the music of Bela Bartok, a willingness to cut loose from the moorings of Brahms, Mozart, and even Beethoven, to let go and allow the tides of emotions to rip forth.  This is music that speaks from the heart.  Bartok’s music expresses a wide range of emotions, from brooding resignation, to unbearable pain, to strident outrage.  What Bartok’s music does is allow us to know something about his life, to feel the pride and pain he experienced as a Hungarian during his county’s most turbulent times: from the horror of the communist takeover in the 1920s, to the devastating Nazi purges of the 1940s.  Bartok finally had to get away, and with his wife resettled in the United States where, at last, his music gained wide-spread popularity.  Bartok’s three piano concerts are quite different from one another, three shades of the composer’s deep and bitter emotions.


The first piano concerto was composed in 1926, when he was exploring relentless driving rhythms.  In Bartok’s hands, the piano becomes a percussive instrument.  The concerto is dissonant, but not in the way other 20th-century composers used dissonance.  Dissonant notes are added to the chords to increase their pungency, to give them a sharp and snappy sound quality.  There is no need for musical resolution, because the dissonance does not work as harmony but rather as color. The middle movement is a decided change of pace, a relaxing of the percussive elements, of gentle textures in which the tone of the piano seems to matter more than the actual notes. The piece ends with a rush of driving, repetitive rhythms.


The second piano concerto was composed in 1930-31.  Bartok’s instrument was the piano, and this was his showpiece while touring Europe and America in the 1930s.  It’s a concerto expressive of his native Hungary, particularly Hungarian folk music, which he had been recording, cataloguing and studying since the turn of the century.  Although there is no overt folk music quotation in this concerto, it is just as close to the folk traditions as those other Bartok pieces that actually do quote folk tunes.  The second piano concerto is among Bartok’s greatest works.


The third piano concerto was composed in the United States, and was completed within days of Bartok’s death, in 1945.  He wrote it for his wife—a concert pianist in her own right—for her to play and earn a living after his death.  A far simpler and more tonal work, it’s reflective more of Gershwin’s urbane music than of Bartok’s primitive Hungarian folk music, and is among his most popular works. You can hear strains of Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F.  That said, the second movement is based on the slow movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet Number 15 in A Minor, Opus 132.  This is the movement in which Beethoven sings a hymn of praise after having recovered from a serious illness.  Bartok’s hymn is always in the piano, slow and religious in quietude and feeling. It’s kinship with Beethoven’s quartet is more spiritual than melodic.


About this CD—it’s brilliant.  Conductor Pierre Boulez is a decided Bartok specialist, and clearly relishes these works.  Piano Concerto No. 1 was recorded with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, with Kristin Zimmerman as soloist. Piano Concerto No. 2 was recorded with the Berlin Philharmonic, with Leif Ove Andsnes as soloist. Piano Concerto No. 3 was recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra, with Helena Grimaud as soloist.  These are three shades of Bela Bartok's unique genius, that breathe with life in three moving performances.


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