Essential Bartók
A giant of Hungarian music in the first half of the 20th century, Béla Bartók (1881-1945) fused influences from diverse composers – Liszt, Debussy and Richard Strauss among them – with groundbreaking work on folk music to develop a musical language that was unmistakably his own: pungent melodies and piquant rhythms allied to formal mastery and brilliant skill in orchestration.
Read more…Bartók's early career was often defined by a lack of public acceptance, with his only opera, the one-act 'Duke Bluebeard's Castle' (1911), lying unperformed until he had gained public acceptance with his first ballet, 'The Wooden Prince'. Bartók's pioneering ethnographical work with folk music – much of it undertaken with fellow composer Zoltán Kodály – continued to influence his own work. As did his training as a pianist: he resumed a career as a performer in the 1920s and composed several works for himself to play. He was eventually forced out of Hungary in 1940 by unbearable political pressures, but was unhappy after he moved to the USA. Despite this, and in the face of declining health, he produced his Concerto for Orchestra in 1943, one of his most exuberant and popular works.