Classical Music | Music for Quartet

Recorded on 08/08/2006, uploaded on 01/19/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Quartet No. 2, Op. 17            Béla Bartók

Bela Bartok's second string quartet was written between 1915 and 1917.  The premiere was on March 3, 1918 by the Waldbauer-Kerpely string quartet, to whom the piece was dedicated.  During this period Bartok composed his first ballet, Wooden Prince, and his one-act opera, Bluebeard's Castle, was premiered.  He also began work on his second ballet, The Miraculous Mandarin.  The second string quartet is an unconventional three-movement work - the first two of which will be performed today.  Though the first movement is written in a conventional sonata form (with an exposition, development, and recapitulation), it explores a new world of colors and textures.  The expression is a blend of haunting mysticism and restless passion.  The second movement is a wild and extroverted contrast to the first.  Before World War I, Bartok had studied and arranged folk music which he and Zoltan Kodaly had collected in their travels throughout middle-Europe.  This movement shows many of these folk influences and reminds listeners of an earlier piano piece, the familiar Allegro Barbaro.  Often rough and even brutal, other times dancing and fanciful, it concludes with a breathtaking (and dangerously fast!) Prestissimo.      Jocelyn Butler

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.