Violin Sonatas Nos, 1 and 2 Contrasts Gyorgy Pauk, Violin Jend Jand6, Piano Kalmain Berkes, Clarinet Bela Bartok (1881 - 1945) Violin Sonata No

Violin Sonatas Nos, 1 and 2 Contrasts Gyorgy Pauk, Violin Jend Jand6, Piano KAlmain Berkes, Clarinet Bela Bartok (1881 - 1945) Violin Sonata No. 1, Sz 75 Violin Sonata No. 2, Sz 76 Contrasts, Sz 11 1 The Hungarian composer BBla Bartok occupies, as any great composer must, a unique position, his vital musical language inimitable and at once recognisable. He was born in 1881 in Nagyszentmikl6s, in a region of Hungary later acquired by Romania, the son of the director of a government agricultural school, a talented amateur musician. After the latter's death in 1888, the family moved, settling first at Nagyszollos, later to form part of Czechoslovakia. For a time Bartok was sent away to school in ~agyvarad,where he lodged with his mother's sister. later to return to his mother and sister. when oroaress at the school seemedinadequate. He had had his first piano lessonsirom his mother and had shown significant musical interest and promise in these early years. Serious and consistent musical training, however, proved difficult until his mother found a position on the teaching staff of a teachers' training college in Pozsony, then part of Hungary and at one time its capital and now, as Bratislava, the capital of the Slovak Republic. Here Bartokstudiedwith Laszlo Erkel, a son of the distinguished Hungarian composer Ferenc Erkel, while the city itself offered opportunities for amateur performance and for hearing concerts and operas. In these years he developed his own very considerable ability as a pianist, while composing in a largely derivative style. Completion of his studies at school was followed by the decision to embark on professional musical studies not in Vienna, where a scholarship was offered, but in Budapest, following the example of his school-fellow Ern6 Dohnanyi, four years his senior. In spite of ill health, which had dogged his childhood and adolescence, Bartok was able, during his earlier years at the Budapest Academy, to devote his attention very largely to performance as a pianist, with some professional engagements. His work as acomposerwas resumed through a study of recent scores by Richard Strauss and by a growing interest in Hungarian national music, a field that had remained unexplored and misunderstood bvcomposers such as Liszt, whose Hungarian ~ha1;sodie.s had relied on a more~ermanand sophisticated source than the music of the people. Bartok's early career began as a pianist, after a brief period of study with his friend Dohnanyi, with appearances in Viennaand Berlin. At the same time his first major composition, Kossuth, a hero's life, based on the life of Lajos Kossuth, leader of the Hungarian revolt against Austrian suzerainty in 1848, won predictablesuccess at home. His attention as a composer, however, was now drawn to Hungarian folk-musicin all its amazing regionalvariety. Intothis he undertookconsiderable research. incollaborationwithZoltan Kodalv. Thisinterest hadanovewhelmina effect on'his composition, allowing him to hevelop, in a direction very different from that taken by Kodaly, a musical idiom that was both fundamentally Hungarian and essentially his own. Ironically it was at home that Bartok was least able to make an impression on the public as a composer. In 1907 he joined the staff of the Budapest Academy as a piano teacher, holding the position for the next thirty years, but it was only abroad that his work as a composer began to attract very considerable interest. The situation at home was not helped by the political events that followed the defeat in 1918, the consequent division of Hungarian territory, the economic difficulties of the country and the brief period of communist rule under Bela Kun, followed by the inevitable reaction, under Admiral Horthy. The proposed establishment of an archive of Hungarian folk-music under the direction of Bartok came to nothing, but he was eventually able to retain his position at the Academy, while gradually concentrating considerable attention on his career as a performer abroad, thus introducing his work to a wider audience than was ever possible in Hungary, even had general taste developed a greater degree of discrimination and interest in the contemporary. In the 1930s Bart6k was able to devote himself more consistently to the classification and publication of research material, with, in 1936, an expedition to Anatolia, in the company of the Turkish composer Adnan Saygiin, the results of which were published posthumously. Meanwhile political events in Germany had their repercussions in his own ~rofessionallife. National Socialist censorship of music in Germany and'questions about Bart6k's own racial credentials led him to forbid performances of his music in Germany, and the occupation of Austria, and consequent changes in the management and ownership of Universal Edition, Bartok's publishers and for long his supporters, made the situation still more difficult. A concert appearance in New York with Szigeti in the spring of 1940 was followed the next year by appointment as a Visiting Assistant at Columbia University, which he held for two years, until the end of 1942. Bartbk's final years were spent in deteriorating health and with some financial uncertainty, although there were commissions for new works, some of which were fulfilled, while others were either rejected or left unfinished at his death in 1945. Significantly enough, this last period in America brought one of his best known works, the Concerto for Orchestra, commissioned by Koussevitzky in memory of his wife, with the viola concerto, commissioned by William Primrose, and the third piano concerto left to be completed by others. , Bartok's first sonata for violin and piano was written in 1903 and coolly received by Leopold Auer and other members of the jury of the Prix Rubinstein in Paris in 1905. The first numbered and published sonata, the Violin Sonafa No. 1, in three movements, was written in the last three months of 1921 and dedicated to the Hungarian violinist Jelly dlAranyi, great-niece of Joachim, who gave the performance of the work with him in London on 24th March 1922, followed by performance in Paris, in both places providing a very significant introduction of his work as a composer. Between July and November in the same year he wrote a second sonata for Jelly d'Aranyi, which she first performed with the composer in London on 7th May 1923. Both sonatas are highly original and often astringent in idiom, at times showing overt Hungarian influence in rhythmic figuration, the choice of certain melodic intervals and at times in mood. It was for Jelly d'Aranyi that Ravel, acomposer also fascinated by the problems of combining string timbre with the percussive qualities of the piano, wrote his Tzigane. Both Bartok's numbered violin sonatas have ambiguities of tonality, although the composer himself regarded the first as in C sharp minor and the second as in C major. The formerends, indeed, with apiano chord that combines C sharp major and C sharp minor, to which the violin adds the note B, the seventh. The first of the three movements opens with the first three notes of the chord of C sharp minor, but the piano figuration, pedalled to producesonorities reminiscent, it has been suggested, of the Indonesian gamelan, obscures this tonality, while the violin enters with a sustained C natural. There are suggestions of the influence of Schoenberg in occasional use of what might appear to be part of a series of the twelve semitones of the scale, while the device of displaced octaves, in which some of the notes of a melody may be raised or lowered an octave, may also be associated with Schoenberg. The opening gamelan-like texture, however, suggests rather the language of Debussy, echoed in an occasional suggestion of the whole-tone scale. The rhythm of the violin part, on the other hand, is often essentially Hungarian. Although this may not be at once apparent, the first movement is broadly in tripartite sonata-form, with an exposition, a central development and a recapitulation. The form of the second movement is more easily heard. It is ternary in structure with the two elements of the first section re-appearing in the third, framing acentral section that makes use of two other elements. The movement opens with the violin alone, then joined by the piano in gentle chords. There is a further passage for solo violin, joined once again by the piano. The middle section makes use of initial syncopation, followed by sharply rhythmic double stopped chords from the violin, which introduces the final section, at first with sustained chords from the piano, below a violin line that has all the feeling of an improvisation. The last movement needs less explanation, bursting upon the listener with all the vigour and energy of a Hungarian peasant dance that brings the two instruments together in mood. The second of the two sonatas has only two movements, the first allowing a dialogue between violin and piano, the latter opening with a melodic line that almost suggests recitative. A relatively harsh climax is followed by a return of this opening texture and melodic contour. The second movement continues, without any perceptible break, the violin now playing pizzicato, before both instruments embark on vigorous material owing much to Hungarian peasant music. This second movement, which is in the form of a rondo, like the third movement of the first sonata, makes use of material derived from the first movement, providing music of fascinating variety, excitement and agitation gradually subsiding into tranquillity, with a final widely-spacedchord of C major. If the combination of violin and piano presents problems in the reconciliation of timbres, the addition of aclarinet may be thought toadd afurther complication.

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