BARTOK: CONCERTI FOR PIANO Nos. THH HUNGARIAN STATE ORCHESTRA - JANOS RFHRENCSI

PIANO CONCERTO No. 1 band 1. Allegro Moderato band 2. Andante—Allegro molto KORNEL ZEMPLENY, Piano

The Composer —When future generations of music lovers enumerate the great creative musi- cians of the twentieth century, it is safe to say that Béla Barték will be high on the list. Few men of our time have come close to him in pro- ducifig music of such enormous vitality and originality. Few have approached his accom- plishments in unearthing and furthering the cause of genuine folk music. Yet, in his native Hungary, Barték was always recognized far more for his pianistic prowess than for his ac- complishments as a composer. And in America, where he sought refuge during World War i), he was allowed to die from poverty and neglect. Attention and recognition came too late to save a great man and permit him to create more masterpieces.

Bartdk received his training as a pianist, first from his mother, then from Laszlé Erkel, and then from Istvan Thoman at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest, where he studied com- position with Janos Koessler. While he had dif- ficulty winning recognition for his music, Barték was acclaimed as a pianist. He even succeeded his teacher on the piano faculty of the Academy, and he began to concertize all over Europe.

In 1905, Barték formed what amounted to a lifelong association with fellow composer Zoltan Kodaly. The two young men had come to realize that what had been passing for Hun- garian folk music wasn’t Hungarian but of Gypsy origin. Together they worked for years seeking and compiling the genuine folk music, not only of Hungary but also of Rumania, Yugo- slavia, Bulgaria and Turkey. Many of the unusual rhythms, melodies and harmonies of this folk music influenced the compositions of both men.

Bartok devoted the major part of his life to concertizing, teaching, composing and endless folk music research. Despite the fact that he and his music were held in much higher regard abroad than they were at home, he continued to make Budapest his headquarters until 1940, when political conditions at home forced him and his wife to emigrate to the United States.

Bartok spent the last five years of his life in New York. Here he continued to give concerts, often with his wife as keyboard partner. Colum- bia University made it possible for him to carry on further folk music studies. And it was in America that he wrote his last compositions. Three of these—the Concerto for Orchestra, Sonata for Solo Violin and Piano Concerto No. 3 —are among his most important works. But the strain of work and the lack of sufficient financial support undermined his health, and on Septem- ber 26, 1945, he died. How great a loss to the world of music his passing was may be gathered from Bartdék’s own remark to his doctor shortly before his death: “The trouble is that I have to go with so much still to say.”

The Music—The chief influences. on Barté6k’s musical style were the folk music of Central Europe and his career as a virtuoso pianist. He developed his own individual manner of key- board playing, concentrating on the chordal and percussive potentialities of the instrument. These, in turn, colored much of his Writing. But there were other influences, too. Writing in the latest edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Mustcians, Colin Mason declares that within the framework of Bartdk’s creative output “is con- tained some part of almost every musical stvle that the twentieth century has produced. Bartok’s was an essentially eclectic nature. He was: always intensely interested in any new development, of whatever school, and was constantly extending his means of expression by exploiting those re-

vealed by others. But so great was his personality that he was able to absorb all, and to fashion them, together or separately, into something that was unmistakably Barték. Thus his eclecticism led only to an immense breadth of technical re- source, never to plagiarism or disunity of style.”

Bart6k composed three piano concerti. The first dates from 1926, the second 1931, and the third was incomplete at his death in 1945.

PIANO CONCERTO NO. 1: Bartdék wrote his First Piano Concerto between August and November of 1926. For several years he had produced very little by way of new music. Most of his time had been spent teaching at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest and appearing in concerts throughout Europe as pianist-composer. But 1926 saw the creation not only of the First Piano Concerto but of other keyboard works as well: a piano sonata, the suite Out of Doors, and Nine Little Piano Pieces.

The concerto was given its world premiére on July 1, 1927, at Frankfurt, during the festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music, with Bartdék as piano soloist and the or- chestra conducted by Wilhelm Furtwingler.

There is an interesting story about the con- cetto’s debut in America. Barték came to this country for the first time in December, 1927. That month, he was scheduled for an appear- ance as composer and piano soloist with Willem Mengelberg and the New York Philharmonic. The work he chose for this American introduc- tion was the First Piano Concerto. After examin- ing the score, however, Mengelberg declared the concerto would be too difficult to prepare in the limited rehearsal time. Reluctantly, Bartok sub- stituted his early Rhapsody for Piano and Or- chestra. He was not long, though, in finding a champion for the concerto: Fritz Reiner, young Hungarian-born conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony. The following month—in January, 1928 —Bartdk played the concerto for the first time in this country at a concert in New York by Reiner and the Cincinnati forces.

Though the First Piano Concerto is uniquely Bartok’s, he once indicated in a letter that he had been influenced by the works of other compos- ers. “In my youth,” he wrote, “my ideal of beauty was not so much the art of Bach or of Mozart as that of Beethoven. Recently it has changed some- what: in recent years I have considerably occu- pied myself with music before Bach, and I believe that traces of this are to be noticed in the Piano Concerto and the Nine Little Piano Pieces.” These traces, however, would be hard to find in the concerto without Bartdk’s guid- ance, for this is one of his more dissonant, per- cussive works. A much more direct influence in this concerto

is that of the American composer Henry Cowell, who has long been famous for his development of “tone clusters,” groups of notes that lie close together on the keyboard. They may be struck with the hand or even the forearm, as Cowell often does in his music. When the Hungarian heard his American colleague practicing tone clusters, he was so impressed that he introduced him into the leading musical circles of Europe. Then, in 1926, Barték presented Cowell in a concert of his music in Budapest. Tone clusters appeared in many of Bartdék’s works during the middle 1920s, including the Piano Concerto No. 1. Here, in certain places, the soloist is re- quired to play a black key and a white key simul- taneously with his thumb. Barték acknowledged . his debt to Cowell, and even wrote him asking permission to use tone clusters in his music.

In the First Concerto the piano is treated pri-

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RECORD LIBRARY MEMORIAL MS-197 STEREO

land 2 K conducting

Side Two

PIANO CONCERTO No. 2 band 1. Allegro band 2. Allegro molto band 8. Adagio TIBOR WEHNER, Piano

marily as a percussion rather than as a melodic instrument. As a result, the thematic material is often deliberately harsh and dissonant, at the same time always strikingly fresh and original. The first and third movements are full of vigor and rhythmic drive. It is the quiet, almost mys- terious middle movement, however, that is the most unusual. Here the percussion instruments engage in an extensive duet with the piano, much as they were to do later in the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. In this movement, Bartok took great pains to prescribe in the mi- nutest detail just how each percussion instru- ment should be played in each passage. PIANO CONCERTO NO. 2: This concerto, begun in October, 1930, and completed in September, 1931, is a transitional work, coming midway be- tween Bartok’s more percussive, aggressive early music and the mellower compositions of his last years. Like its predecessor, this concerto received its premiére at a festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music—this one in Amsterdam in 1933. It was soon repeated in other European music centers, where it met with a generally enthusiastic reception.

Even the casual listener will note immediately this is a more melodic concerto than the First, though just as full of vitality and still contains a generous heiping of percussive tone clusters.

The first movement, thematically the strongest of the three that make up this concerto, in the words of Bartdk’s biographer, Halsey Stevens, is characterized by “incessant bustle and busy-ness”’ that recall the Bach concerti. The stringed in- struments are omitted from this movement. The middle movement combines the functions of Adagio and Scherzo, two slow sections surround- ing a Presto. In the Adagio sections, a chorale- like passage in the strings alternates with a more improvisational passage for piano and percus- sion — only the percussion instruments are not as prominently featured as they were in the slow movement of the First Concerto. The Presto which interrupts the calm of the Adagio is con- trastingly brilliant —full of scales, tremolos and tone clusters for the soloist. This is followed by a return to the Adagio, and the movement ends quietly. But there is more brilliance in store for the listener in the final Allegro molto. This takes the form of a rondo, in which the basic theme is new but the alternating episodes are all de- rived from material in the first movement that has been rhythmically transformed. So cleverly — have these transformations been made that, with- out following the printed music, it is difficult to recognize the source from which they sprang. The Artists —Janos Ferenscik was born in Budapest in 1907, studied at the National Con- servatorium there, became conductor of the Budapest Opera House, and. was subsequently known as the most popular Hungarian conduc- tor. His concert tours have carried him to Lon- don, Amsterdam, Vienna, Berlin and Hollywood, as well as Prague and the Soviet Union.

Kornel Zempleny, professor of the “Béla ~ Barték Conservatory,” was born into a family of musicians in 1922. Topping a number of years of applied study, the pianist had the good fortune to spend his final year as a pupil of Dohnanyi. At his public debut in 1949 he won first prize at an international competition by giving his interpretations of Bartdk, Kodaly and Liszt.

Tibor Wehner, born the son of organ virtuoso Geza Wehner in 1918, started his career as a prod- igy. It was in a concert arranged as a debut for young artists, of which Tibor was the youngest. He played a Bach Toccata. This artist is equally at home playing Bach, Beethoven and Bartok.

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ENGINEER: LASZLO CSINTALAN

EDITOR: URSULA STENZ ; MASTERING: PETER CURIEL

LINER NOTES: PAUL AFFELDER COVER PHOTO: JOHN ROSS

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Library of Congress Catalog

Card No. 70-750630

This album was previously released ihe | n as Westminster No. WST-17003 -