Jeno Jan - Bartók: Piano Concertos Nos. 1-3 [CD]

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Bela Bartok (1881 - 1945)Piano Concerto No.1Piano Concerto No.2Piano Concerto No.3The Hungarian composer Bela Bartok was born in 1881 in an area that nowforms part of Romania. His father, director of an agricultural college, was akeen amateur musician, while it was from his mother that he received his earlypiano lessons. The death of his father in 18891ed to a less settled existence,as his mother resumed work as a teacher, eventually settling in the Slovakcapital of Bratislava (the Hungarian Pozsony), where Bartok passed his earlyadolescence, counting among his school- fellows the composer Erno Dohnanyi.Offered the chance of musical training in Vienna, like Dohnanyi he choseinstead Budapest, where he won a considerable reputation as a pianist, beingappointed to the teaching staff of the Academy of Music in 1907. At the sametime he developed a deep interest, shared with his compatriot Zoltan Kodaly,in the folk-music of his own and adjacent countries, later extended as far asAnatolia, where he collaborated in research with the Turkish composer AdnanSayg??n.As a composer Bartok found acceptance much more difficult, particularly inhis own country , which was, in any case, beset by political troubles, when thebrief post- war left-wing government of Bela Kun was replaced by thereactionary regime of Admirai Horthy. Meanwhile his reputation abroad grew,particularly among those with an interest in contemporary music, and his successboth as a pianist and as a composer, coupled with dissatisfaction at the growingassociation between the Horthy government and National Socialist Germany, ledhim in 1940to emigrate to the United States of AmericaIn his last years, after briefly held teaching appointments at Columbia andHarvard, Bartok suffered from increasing ill-health, and from poverty which theconditions of exile in war-time could do nothing to alleviate. He died instraitened circumstances in 1945, leaving a new Viola Concerto incompleteand a Third Piano Concerto more nearly finished. The years in America,whatever difficulties they brought, also gave rise to other importantcompositions, including the Concerto for Orchestra, commissioned by theKoussevitzky Foundation, a Sonata for Solo Violin for Vehudi Menuhin and,in the year before he left Hungary, Contrasts, for Szigeti and BennyGoodman.Bartok's compositions for piano and orchestra include, in addition to thethree concertos, a Rhapsody and a Scherzo. The first of the piano concertos waswritten in the summer and autumn of 1926 in Budapest and first performed at theISCM Festival in Frankfurt the following July, with the composer as soloist andthe conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler. The style of piano-writing is generallypercussive and there is a frequent use of dissonant intervals, leading acontemporary American critic to castigate the work as one of 'unmitigatedugliness'. This is hardly a judgement that would be echoed now, when themusic of Bartok is better understood. Described by the composer as in E minor,the

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