A Famous Modern Composer

Donald Macleod looks back on Béla Bartók’s heyday as a performer in the late 1920s.

After being granted a sabbatical from his teaching at the Budapest Academy Bartók was able to realise an ambition he had cherished ever since he had graduated, of undertaking a coast-to-coast concert tour of the USA.

This was against the backdrop of rising nationalism in Europe. Bartok’s inclinations had him swimming against that tide. Romania, where he had been born, was anxious to claim him for its own. He objected to being called a “Romanian composer” and wrote to the author of a radio talk about him who described him in that way: “My creative work just because it arises from three sources – Hungarian, Romanian Slovakian - might be regarded as the embodiment of the very concept of integration so much emphasised in Hungary today… my own idea however – of which I have become fully conscious since I found myself as a composer – is the brotherhood of peoples, brotherhood in spite of all wars and conflicts. I try to the best of my ability to serve this idea in music…”

Two Portraits
ii. One grotesque – Presto
London Symphony Orchestra
Claudio Abbado, conductor

Out of Doors
iii Musettes
iv The Night's Music
v The Chase
Denes Varjon, piano

Piano Concerto
i. Allegro moderato
ii Andante
Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Ferenc Fricsay, conductor
Geza Anda, piano

Cantata Profana
Chicago Symphony Orchestra & Chorus
Pierre Boulez, conductor
John Aler, tenor
John Tomlinson, bass