Performing Bartok?
I enjoy listening to the Bela Bartok string quartets, and was
wondering if his 2 concertos, sonatas and duos for violin are worth the effort involved in pursuing, and also how difficult they really are. His string quartets are full of interesting sounds. I know that the concertos are labeled as level 5 and 6. If anyone has experience playing Bartok's works, please let me know what you think and give me some performance advice. Also, please tell me which concerto you prefer, #1 or #2.
Thank you in advance !
Replies (32)
It's great to hear that you love Bartok, I too adore his quartets. If you want a stellar recording (though I'm a bit biased towards this), I recommend the Takacs quartet (both recordings are great, but I prefer the older one). I don't know how you play, but I would probably recommend staying away from the 2nd violin concerto, as that is among the most difficult pieces ever written for violin. The first would probably be a bit more approachable, but that's no walk in the park either! The first rhapsody is very nice, I've actually played it, and it's much more difficult than it sounds. It's extremely difficult to play very musically. There are tons of awkward passages and it's also difficult to bring together with the pianist. A good friend of mine has played both of the violin piano sonatas, and he says the first is easier, but that it is also more difficult to put together with the piano. I'd imagine that both violin & piano sonatas are extremely difficult to put together with the piano, and both are difficult to listen to. I've been listening to the first sonata for quite a while, and I just recently started actually enjoying it. As for the second rhapsody, probably similar to the first. Definitely look at the Romanian Folk Dances.
From: SKOWRONSKI: CLASSICAL RECORDINGS
"Vincent Skowronski's TZIGANE is EXCELLENT!
And this violinist is much more comfortable in the RHAPSODY #1 of Bela Bartok than is Joseph Szigeti, a Hungarian to begin with, for whom Bartok wrote the piece."
Review from AUDIO Magazine
NOTE: Further Skowronski information from v.com 'profile.'
Nice, Skowronski, shameless plug for your own recordings? :)
David, just how hard is that Rhapsody #1? I'm dying to play it but don't want to get in over my head.
every time i read one of vincent's comments i become confused.
Bartok had THREE v.s. The first one "No 0" is a early piece, long, very hungarian and raphsodic, with clear Brahms influence. I've a fine version
by Andre Gertler. Ther´s another by Accardo on Dynamics with Ginastera´s v.c.
Greetings,
I think the 44 duets are some of the real gems of the repertoire. They can be played in a kind of average way and are really enjoyable, or you can ask of yourslef and the students to actually play what Bartok wrote, I make a differenc ebettween p and mp within a short time frame, play the articulation he wrote, play -all- the accents and so on. The switch to very high musical demands while keepiung techical (as in lots of rapid passages and complex double stopping) demands a litlte lower make them an incredibly useful part of any violinists training.
Cheers,
Buri
Buri,
You forgot to mention that, aside from being excellent student pieces, they're just plain neat to listen to! :)
MG
Greetings,
gee, i thought `real gems of the repertoire ` covered that. Still, glad you rammed the point home. I play them in recitals quite a lot and they always bring the house down. (Always make sure i have a better player than me to work with ...;))
Cheers,
Buri
Buri,
D'oh. I can't read. Missed your "real gems" comment somehow...cheers. :)
MG
Maura,
The first rhapsody is a great challenge. I think it's musically more difficult than technically. The first movement requires a big robust tone, and very delicate, elegant phrasing in the middle section. The second movement is just plain awkward. There are lots of places that Bartok doesn't let you play in just one position (lots of stretching and 2nd position). It's funny how the most awkward passages also tend to be the most musically intense. If you take the longer ending (which is the less popular one but the one I liked more) it's very difficult to put together with piano because there is a section where you and the piano are playing the same thing, but a quarter note apart (in 5/8 time in an accelerando, which doesn't make it easier). My pianist and I rehearsed this a lot! Other than that, there are some fast double stop places, and one heck of an artificial harmonic section. Lots of agility is required in this piece, and I found that relaxing as much as possible really helped me out. This might sound strange, but I'm working on Sibelius now, and I'd say that the 1st rhapsody is just as difficult (if not more so in certain places).
Koszonom, David! :) (excuse my bad Magyar spelling!) Maybe I'll wait till next semester for that piece. :) Can't find an affordable edition anyway...
Szivesen! How great, I'm totally impressed! Your spelling was fine ;-) Where/from whom did you learn that?
Actually I'm trying to teach myself Magyar. :) I'm currently obsessed w/ Hungarian music, culture, history, etc. Sajnálom, csak egy kicsit beszelék magyarul. :)
What a great question! I was going to ask something similar for myself, as I have my novel's protagonist playing quartet #2, and I was wondering what movements/passages might be difficult for either the first or the second violinists, and if anyone could sum up the challenges of #2 in a few sentences.
Anyone? Anyone?
David, I love the Takacs in their recordings of other repertoire (particularly Dvorak) and I've heard great things about their Bartok quartet cycle, so I'm on hold at the library for it (instead of hearing the Emerson recording right away). Can't wait to hear it!
I love the 1st concerto a lot... And the 2nd one too.
Take a look at his Sonatas, they are all breathing "slavian". That's what interest me in Bartok, as in Enescu...
Best
Audrey
Skowronski- stop plugging your recordings on here. It is very annoying.
Terez, I'm performing the second quartet this weekend (2nd violin)! You couldn't talk about its difficulties without mentioning the closing section of the 2nd mvmt, marked 200 per dotted half note! The first violin and viola play a constantly changing tapestry of quarter notes, on the edge of inaudibility. Not only do the notes fly up and down, but the metric stress does as well, so that it becomes difficult for the other two players to keep their places.
Another kind of difficutly lies in the last two notes of the piece, simple pizzicato for the viola and cello. But they're each bordered by several seconds of silence, and trying to get two people to pizz at exactly the same time is maddening!
Nathan - brilliant, detailed comments - thanks so much! And good luck on your performance this weekend!
Thanks! It will be the first time my wife and I perform together as a married couple... if we can play the end of the 2nd mvt we can deal with anything!
Greetings,
Nathan has truly mastered the unfortunate turn of phrase. I blame myself,
Cheers,
Buri
Buri, bravo! :) We've been saving it up until this Bartok is done... now THAT would be a good storyline for the novel.
There has been no mention of Bartok's Solo Sonata which is one of the great pieces for solo violin. It was his penultimate work and we have Menuhin to thank for its commission. I "learned" it back in 1972 when it was not a standard piece. I did this without the benefit of a recording which proved to be a worthwhile experience. Interestingly, I worked on this while I was studying Bruch concerto with Galamian. He got very upset with me because I came to lesson after lesson unprepared with the Bruch which I despised at the time, since I was trying to figure out the Bartok. (I have since changed my mind about Bruch). I did finally finish off the Bruch and asked Galamian if I could play this piece I had been practicing on my own. He had nothing to say about it, just that he didn't know anything about the piece. I have come back to the Bartok many times and discover something new in it each time, just like solo Bach.
Have you considered his concerto for orchestra?
Ultimately, Bartok is a perfect fusion of classical music and folk music, driven by an artistic vision of immense depth that (to me) parallels the darkest events of the first half of the 20th Century. You simply can't imagine his musical creations being written in any other era. But with all that, it is fundamentally at its deepest heart a highly sublimated yet gut-deep form of Gypsy music.
Now, I know I'm awfully wordy, so let me say this more simply.....
Play it like Gypsy music.
Cordially, Sandy
Sandy, I just LOVE what you wrote here. I was pretty turned off Bartok when I listened to his 3rd quartet last fall. I just didn't pick up any of the "folk" angle. But now I just got the Takacs recording of his six string quartets, and, having read your comments here, I can't wait to listen to them. (I've enjoyed his violin concerto, listened to for the first time just recently.)
Nathan - how was your recent performance of the 2nd? Thanks again for all your great comments. Oh, and BTW, I visited your website - the articles you wrote are fabulous!
"Play it like Gypsy music"
Sorry, but this isn't the right idea at all. While some of the folk elements may have a gypsy influence, it's a totally different style of playing, not usually suited towards Bartok IMHO. People need to understand that while there are "Hungarian" gypsies, the two cultures really don't have much to do with one another. I think you'd be horrified if you heard Bartok's 2nd concerto played in a gypsy style. Not that there is anything wrong with the gypsy style, it's just very different.
Terez: Thank you for your comments; I hope it helps you hear what an incredible composer Bartok is.
David: Thank you, too, for your comment. Perhaps I should have said Hungarian/Gypsy, or authentic backwoods Hungarian folk/Gypsy. Not the usual kind of popular Gypsy music we hear. Of course, even Brahms missed the distinction. But the impulse is the same, I think. It's the rhythmic, technical, folk song element from that part of the world. And of course Bartok and Kodaly were responsible for preserving the authentic folk music of backwoods Roumania and Hungary before its people were wiped out. So when I said "Gypsy," I wasn't making a technical distinction. And, anyway, as an amateur and not as a professional musician or musicologist, I believe that what I do best in music is listen and appreciate. My brain may say that there is a difference between Gypsy music and the Hungarian folk roots of Bartok's music, but my ear and my heart feel it all as Gypsy music.
Cordially, Sandy
Hi Terez, our performance (and I can't say that now w/o thinking of Buri!) went well, and was a further reminder of how much I love playing Bartok. It's funny; always in the audience at Mimir is a man named Stephen Seleny, who went to conservatory in Budapest and knew Bartok, Kodaly and Dochnanyi as well as many other great composers and performers of the day. He writes the program notes for the festival, and told us some stories about watching the Waldbauer-Kerpely quartet rehearse (the group for which many if not all of the quartets were written)!
I've listened to the wisdom of many coaches about Bartok, including of course my teacher Felix Galimir who knew him briefly. There's always an uneasy tension between the folk/gypsy elements and the formal elements of composition. No one else could force them to coexist so peacefully, or allow them to fight it out for our benefit.
I didn't have a feel for Bartok until I started dabbling in gypsy and ethnic fiddling.
When I was a young city kid growing up in New York, Bartok sounded like it came from outer space to me. I had to grow up and hear real ethnic fiddlers to really understand the tonality of what Bartok was doing.
The way I see it, Bartok essentially took folk music and put it into symphonic form. If that stuff is played "straight", it loses that Eastern European feel. The element of dance is very strong in all of Bartok's music, and it becomes a lot more cohesive when one brings out the pulse of the music.
When I play Bartok, I tend to emphasize those folk rhythms while keeping my tone as pure as I can. I also preserve the meter no matter what, as losing the meter (not necessarily the tempo) will result in losing the pulse.
Nathan - glad the performance went well. Very interesting, what you wrote. That goes for others' comments, as well - a great thread to read!
David,
Glad you caught the "Gypsy" vs. "Hungarian" thing. I, like our dear Mr. Kodaly, get rather annoyed at confusion between Magyar and Romany music....:)
MG
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June 14, 2006 at 06:44 PM · Phew! The concertos, although I am not very familiar with either of them, are FIENDISHLY difficult. I am not familiar with Sonata #1. Sonata #2 is a very interesting but, again, difficult work. Rhapsody #1 is more approachable and a delightful piece (and I'm not just saying that because he wrote it for Szigeti!) although, like all Bartok, it can be tricky. The most approachable things he wrote for violin are the 44 Duos (absolute gems!) and the Romanian Folk Dances.