March 25, 2013.Bartók and Haydn.Béla Bartók was born on this day in 1881 in a small town in an Austro-Hungarian province of Banat.The town, Nagyszentmiklós, was heavily Hungarian, but the region reverted to Romania after the First World War.In 1899 he moved to Budapest to study at the Royal Academy of Music.In his early years his composing style was influenced by Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy.His first significant piece was Violin concerto no. 1, composed in 1907-08 but not published till 1959, fourteen years after Bartók’s death.Three years later came his only opera, Bluebeard's Castle.Now considered a masterpiece, it was rejected at the time as not fit for the stage.During a very productive period, which lasted till the beginning of World War II, Bartók wrote two ballets, The Wooden Prince and The Miraculous Mandarin (the music to the latter, usually performed as an orchestral suite, became one of his most popular pieces), four quartets, two violin sonatas, and such masterpiece as Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936).By the end of the 1930s the conservative regime of the “regent” Miklós Horthy was siding with the Nazi Germany.Bartók, strongly anti-Nazi in his political convictions, felt increasingly uncomfortable in Hungary, and in 1940 he left for the US.He and his wife settled in New York, but the country never became their home (it’s interesting that his former pupil, Fritz Reiner by then was enjoying a flourishing career with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra; Georg Solti and the pianist Lili Kraus, both his former pupils, had also left Hungary).The Bartóks were often short on money, and in 1942Béla fell ill.Two years later Bartók was diagnosed with leukemia. His friends Joseph Szigeti, a famous violinist, and Fritz Reiner tried to help with commissions.One of such commissions, from Serge Koussevitzky's Boston Symphony, produced the famous Concerto for Orchestra.Yehudi Menuhin commissioned a Sonata for Solo Violin.Bartók died on September 26, 1945, leaving his Third Piano concerto and several other works unfinished.Here is Concerto For Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Georg Solti conducting (courtesy of YouTube).
Franz Joseph Haydn was born on March 31, 1732 in a village of Rohrau in western Austria.In addition to string quartets and symphonies, he wrote more than 60 piano sonatas.We are fortunate to have a large collections of those: Davide Polovineo of Istituto Europeo di Musica undertook a research project into all of Haydn’s piano sonatas and uploaded many of them to Classical Connect. Here’s Sonata Hob XVI: 20 in C minor; it was composed in 1777 while Haydn was working for the Esterházys.It’s performed, superbly, by Alfred Brendel.
Bartók and Haydn 2913
March 25, 2013. Bartók and Haydn. Béla Bartók was born on this day in 1881 in a small town in an Austro-Hungarian province of Banat. The town, Nagyszentmiklós, was heavily Hungarian, but the region reverted to
Romania after the First World War. In 1899 he moved to Budapest to study at the Royal Academy of Music. In his early years his composing style was influenced by Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy. His first significant piece was Violin concerto no. 1, composed in 1907-08 but not published till 1959, fourteen years after Bartók’s death. Three years later came his only opera, Bluebeard's Castle. Now considered a masterpiece, it was rejected at the time as not fit for the stage. During a very productive period, which lasted till the beginning of World War II, Bartók wrote two ballets, The Wooden Prince and The Miraculous Mandarin (the music to the latter, usually performed as an orchestral suite, became one of his most popular pieces), four quartets, two violin sonatas, and such masterpiece as Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936). By the end of the 1930s the conservative regime of the “regent” Miklós Horthy was siding with the Nazi Germany. Bartók, strongly anti-Nazi in his political convictions, felt increasingly uncomfortable in Hungary, and in 1940 he left for the US. He and his wife settled in New York, but the country never became their home (it’s interesting that his former pupil, Fritz Reiner by then was enjoying a flourishing career with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra; Georg Solti and the pianist Lili Kraus, both his former pupils, had also left Hungary). The Bartóks were often short on money, and in 1942 Béla fell ill. Two years later Bartók was diagnosed with leukemia. His friends Joseph Szigeti, a famous violinist, and Fritz Reiner tried to help with commissions. One of such commissions, from Serge Koussevitzky's Boston Symphony, produced the famous Concerto for Orchestra. Yehudi Menuhin commissioned a Sonata for Solo Violin. Bartók died on September 26, 1945, leaving his Third Piano concerto and several other works unfinished. Here is Concerto For Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Georg Solti conducting (courtesy of YouTube).
Franz Joseph Haydn was born on March 31, 1732 in a village of Rohrau in western Austria. In addition to string quartets and symphonies, he wrote more than 60 piano sonatas. We are fortunate to have a large collections of those: Davide Polovineo of Istituto Europeo di Musica undertook a research project into all of Haydn’s piano sonatas and uploaded many of them to Classical Connect. Here’s Sonata Hob XVI: 20 in C minor; it was composed in 1777 while Haydn was working for the Esterházys. It’s performed, superbly, by Alfred Brendel.