Continuity and Defiance

Donald Macleod explores Béla Bartók’s decision to leave Europe. But where will he go and how can he possibly leave his mother behind?

Béla Bartók had already been distressed by what he viewed as Hungary’s capitulation to the wishes of Germany, or as he put it “this regime of thieves and murderers.” He also strongly objected to the fact that his publishers, Universal Edition, and the Austrian Performing Rights Society had been “Nazified.” They sent him a form to fill out in which he was asked whether he was “of German blood, of kindred race, or non-Aryan.” Bartók decided that that question would remain unanswered. Meanwhile he became embroiled in a tortuous struggle to wrest his works form Universal and move them to the British firm of Boosey & Hawkes. He wrote to his friend, the violinist Zoltán Székely: “Neither while I am alive nor after my death do I want any German publisher to have any of my work, even if it means that no work of mine will ever be published again. This is for now what is fixed and final.”

Mikrokosmos
Bulgarian Rhythm No. 1 (Vol 4, no.113)
Study in Chords (Vol 3, no 69)
Perpetuum Mobile (Vol 5, no 135)
Chick Corea, piano
Nicolas Economou, piano

Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion
Cheng Zhang, piano
Tomoki Kitamura, piano
Juris Azers, percussion
Weiqi Bai, percussion

Sixth String Quartet
iii Mesto – Burletta – moderato
iv Mesto
Emerson String Quartet

Sonata for Solo Violin
i. Tempo di ciaccona
Yehudi Menuhin, violin

Concerto for Orchestra
v. Finale
Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra
Zoltan Kocsis, conductor