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Béla Bartók:
Rumanian Folk Dances
for mandolin and string ensemble
arranged by Avi Avital

Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer, pianist and collector of Eastern European and Middle Eastern folk music.

Bartók is considered one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. He was one of the founders of the field of ethnomusicology, the study and ethnography of folk music.As a young man, composer Béla Bartók wrote his mother of his life’s ambition: to contribute to “the good of Hungary and of the Hungarian nation.” Although he made his living primarily as a pianist and teacher, he is now recognized primarily for his compositions and his ethnological work. During his lifetime Bartók collected and classified more than 14,000 folks melodies of Hungarian, Slovak, Rumanian, Croatian, Turkish, Bulgarian, and North African origin.

Much of his original work, done with his friend and colleague Zoltán Kodály, took place in the years preceding World War I. After the war, the changing political map of Eastern Europe made it increasingly difficult to travel to the various ethnic regions that they found so rich in folk heritage. Bartók and Kodály had long believed that music of the “Hungarian” style often found in Western European music was more of a stylized urban gypsy music rather than real indigenous peasant music. In their collection process, they first jotted down melodies by hand, but later began to use Edison cylinders to record songs and dances.

Bartók was particularly drawn to the Rumanian folk traditions because he felt that the Rumanian groups had been more isolated from outside influences and were therefore more authentic. He also attracted the variety and colors of instruments used in the Rumanian music– violins, peasant flutes (panpipes), guitar, bagpipes.

The outbreak of war restricted collecting, but it was during this time that Bartók formalized various settings of folk songs and dances for the piano. Román nepi táncok, a set of six Rumanian dances, was written in 1915, arranged for violin and piano the next year, and for salon orchestra in 1917. The material had been collected in 1910 and 1912 among the Rumanians living in areas of what was then Hungary.

The use of the piano by necessity required that timbres of the original instruments be given up, however, the composer chose a register and keyboard touch aspiring to represent the flavor of the original. He simplified the intricacies of melody and rhythm, but compensated for this by enriching the harmonic structure in the left hand. The subsequent orchestral transcription allowed for reintroduction of a richer palate of instrumental timbres through strings and winds. Bartók’s folk dance arrangements typically do not follow the original temps, he makes the fasts faster, and the slow ones slower.

meet the performers

Avi Avital, mandolin

 

meet the composer

Béla Bartók

 

also on the program

Avner Dorman: Mandolin Concerto

Béla Bartók: Rumanian Folk Dances

Osvaldo Golijov: The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind

Dmitri Shostakovich: Chamber Symphony op. 110a