BÉLA BARTÓK (1881–1945)

 

Music for Strings, Percussion & Celesta

Divertimento for strings

Hungarian Sketches for orchestra

 

Music for Strings, Percussion & Celesta

(1936, BB 114, Sz 106)

Divertimento for strings

(1939, BB 118, Sz 113)

Hungarian Sketches fro orchestra

(1931, BB 103, Sz 97)

 

Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra / Zoltán Kocsis

 

Like the majority of Béla Bartók’s works, the three orchestral compositions dating from the 1930s on this recording, are deeply rooted in old ‘multicultural’ Hungary’s folk and peasant music. This is nowhere more evident than in Hungarian Sketches, a suite based on piano pieces composed between 1908 and 1911, in which Bartók relies so heavily on folk-music types of form and melody that one has the impression that they are arrangements of authentic dances and songs. The relationship with folk music in Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and Divertimento, however, is considerably more abstract; it is perceivable only under the surface and the ‘national’ stylistic elements meld seamlessly with the composer’sown musical idiom.

 

Hungaroton SACD HSACD32510