Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra; Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta; Hungarian Sketches

Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra; Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta; Hungarian Sketches

About the Composer: A key figure of the Modernist school, Béla Bartók (1881-1945) was a Hungarian composer whose strong enamourment with traditional folk music led him to become one of his country’s most important musical pioneers. His most popular work is his innovative Concerto for Orchestra which was introduced in 1943.

About the Music: You’ve probably encountered people who have been repelled by classical music because they perceive it to be far too saccharine. The products of Mozart, Haydn, Mendelssohn, and other fine yet overly flowery fellows seem to be partially responsible for cultivating the faulty notion that the entire classical canon strives to shower its listeners with excruciating sappiness. Thankfully, Béla Bartók’s compositions saunter into the room after the cookies have been placed on the table and remind us that the repertoire is more varied than the uninitiated ear may assume. A number of months after hearing the man’s works for the first time, I decided to buy the RCA Red Seal Hybrid Super Audio CD (SACD) reissue of Fritz Reiner’s Bartók recordings with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The Concerto for Orchestra (1943) is the flagship piece on the disc, and it is paired with the similarly popular Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta (1936). The Hungarian Sketches (1931), a near half-dozen set of short orchestral works, is also included to round out the deal.

Concerto for Orchestra - The beginning of Bartók’s most recognized piece is refreshingly ominous and enigmatic. After a brief period of eloquent, low pitched murmurs from the orchestra, a fantastic melody emerges that almost seems to signal impending doom. The orchestra increases momentum shortly afterwards, and several dramatic flourishes follow. When the decibel levels in this movement are at their highest, my mind occasionally has a tendency to conjure images of stunt motorcyclists plying their trade. I suppose that I associate the various crescendos with the heights reached by the attention seekers after they review their insurance policies and soar off the ramp. The second movement is a more low-key affair, and I find it to be one of the most interesting sections of the concerto. It’s very fast-paced, and almost comical to a certain extent, even though the snare drums and horns help it maintain an air of formality. Mystery returns in the third movement, and Bartók provides us with an extremely intense reiteration of the melody that was introduced in the first movement. Serenity seems to prevail in the fourth movement, but Bartók’s music is suddenly ‘interrupted’ by the famous ‘invasion theme’ from Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7! It’s amusing to hear the brass wail to protest this sudden incursion, and it’s nice to know that Bartók has a sense of humour. As expected, a victorious finale follows.

Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta - Even though I found this curiousity to be slightly less accessible than the Concerto for Orchestra, Bartók still presents a cavalcade of unique sounds. The shrill, dark nature of the first movement had no difficulty capturing my interest, and I really liked the crisp percussion in the second. More unsettling sounds emerge in the third movement. The final movement is somewhat deceptive; you might assume that the creepy sounds have been discarded in favour of more radiant ones, but listeners are temporarily marauded by a stinging interlude from the strings. If I should ever find myself trapped in a dilapidated bachelor’s apartment and espy a train of cockroaches emerging from a large crack in the wall only a few inches away from the refrigerator, this is the segment of the work that will immediately return to memory. Thankfully, the piece ends on a relatively positive note.

Hungarian Sketches - There’s quite a contrast between these cheerful works and the two previous compositions. The first in the set, An Evening in the Village, is very folksy as one might expect. The second piece, Bear Dance, is especially noteworthy because I suspect that it may be Bartók’s revised version of Jingle Bells! If you listen to the first notes, you’ll quickly recognize the similarity. Melody, the third short, is too generic to have any appeal, but the musical representation of imbalance in Slightly Tipsy is somewhat entertaining. The final short, Swineherd’s Dance, relies heavily on the woodwinds. The Hungarian Sketches offer a small survey of Bartók’s more flowery composing, but it’s certainly not my favourite work on the disc.

Although I don’t have a SACD player, the sound quality provided by the traditional CD layer is nice and crisp considering the dates of the recordings. You should strongly consider buying this disc if you yearn for an alternative to the works of light-hearted, cloying composers.