Bartók: The Orchestral Masterpieces
Welcome to another of Nihil's unlikely reviews.
Writing reviews is one of my favourite TWC activities, but alas, nobody seems to pay much attention to them and my hard work goes all but ignored. As a result, I am forced to earn my crust by making grand but empty gesticulations in the ethos and by whoring myself with abject hackery in the Thema Devia. But, I always come back here because this is where I enjoy myself the most, and to hell with everybody else.
However, whilst the plight of the music reviewer can be a grim and thankless one, I was pleased that some people enjoyed my Shostakovich post. Writing these reviews is a reward in itself, and if anybody likes them, so much the better. So, today I will enthuse about another twentieth century composer, who may be obscure to some of you. We'll see if many of you are familiar with his work.
Bartók was a genius. IMO, the best of the modernists by far. He was hugely experimental and advanced music by leaps and bounds, but he never lost sight of the fact that no matter how clever you are, what matters is the emotion and expressiveness of the music. Other innovators like Schoenberg or Webern may have been more obvious icons of experimentation, but Bartók never sacrificed musical feeling for the sake of theoretical concepts. While some pioneers of twentieth century experimentation were so preoccupied with liberating music from the constraints of tradition that ironically they became restricted by their own desire for freedom, Bartók, conversely, found a vast expanse of unexplored psychic and artistic terrain before him, and the new techniques allowed him to portray his passionate creative vision in breathtaking and awe-inspring ways. Of all the modernists, none made the imposingly monumental possibilities of the newly liberated musical medium so subservient to their artistic will than Bartók He mastered the unmasterable, commanding the dauntingly massive tonal and melodic possibilities of chromaticism, atonality, pantonality, synthetic scales etc in a way that no other composer did. While an lesser musician would have been either overwhelmed by the flood of potentialities inherent in modern technique, or reduced to making dry intellectual experiments, Bartók was somehow able to wield his powers wisely. He used and controlled the broad palette of new methods freely, switching between them with effortless grace, yet always managing to produce music that remained coherent and keeping technique subservient to purpose.
That's not to say that his music is not difficult, because it is extremely difficult. There is so much here that is new and unfamiliar to the ear, that it can't be understood on first listen and needs to be savoured. When it has been mulled over adequately, the listener will find that unimaginable possibilities of musical scope and depth exist here. Bartók's music goes beyond the ordinary, to a trans-rational realm that grasps at a profound, incomprehensible but exquisite otherness that is too huge to understand or explain and can only be intuited and felt with wonderment. In the future, people will still wonder at Bartók's music. He was perhaps centuries ahead of his time. Is humanity ready for his music yet? Will it ever be?
If I may digress for a moment, it's very interesting to observe the emotional range of the different eras of musical technique. Parallel to the expanding permissiveness of harmony and tonality from the baroque to the modern eras, there is an analogous liberation of feeling. Although I'm guilty of over-simplification here, there is nonetheless some truth in this observation. Where in the baroque era music was intellectual, strictly ordered and pretty much lacking emotion, in the classical it was politely superficial with a forced triviality in keeping with the shallow mores of courtly society, in the romantic it was stormily irate or surgingly emotional sometimes to the point of unseemly sentimentality, the modern era and its complete obliteration of the rulebook allowed the darkest, irrational and destructive elements of nature and the human psyche to express themselves, and also allowed the artist to hint at some indescribably beautiful and mysterious beyondness. Bartók's music is the perfect example of this duality of the chthonic and the celestial, the brutish and the sublime.
Aside from his modernism where scale, key and harmony are concerned, Bartók also utilised a range of brilliantly original formal and structural approaches. He was a very "mathematical" composer, and music academics are forever searching through his oeuvre for interesting numerical patterns. A lot has been written about this fascinating subtext to his written music, but again, the listener is oblivious to such artifice, as indeed he should be. All that really matters in a work of art is whether it succeeds in making the desired impression
It would be remiss of me to forget to mention that, alongside the ground braking revolutions of the then-new musical frontier, Bartók was also deeply influenced by traditional Hungarian and Romanian folk music. Its characteristic scales, melodies and time signatures are everywhere in his music. When not composing, he spent the remainder of his (somewhat frail) energy researching, documenting, collecting and editing the indigenous music of the region.
The subject of my review is a collection of Bartók that goes by the name Bartók: The Orchestral Masterpieces. These are not necessarily a definitive window onto his creative legacy. His string quartets and piano concertos are also essential listening, for example. On this two CD set we find most of his more accessible output, compared to the aforementioned piano concertos and especially compared to the tortuously unapproachable string quartets. The traditional orchestral form was comparatively conventional for a composer who wrote for ensembles as obscure as that used in 1937's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion.
These recordings from the 80's and 90's are conducted by Georg Solti and are reputed as some of the best representations.
I'll discuss each opus in the order that they appear on the cds.
Concerto For Orchestra (1943, revised 1945)
The Concerto For Orchestra is considered by many to be Bartók's masterpiece, an opinion that I don't necessarily agree with. It's certainly a crowd-pleaser, the closest he came to producing a symphonic-style orchestral piece; and a great deal less experimental and challenging than his earlier work - I find it a little tame at times for my personal tastes, although I don't dispute the prevalent opinion that this is one of his most technically accomplished opuses. This was his last finished composition, and is completely satisfying, bearing the marks of maturity and a certain mellowness. The consensus among music theorists is that Bartók here demonstrated the complete mastery that came of a lifetime of artistic dedication.
There are five movements arranged in the arch form that Bartók was fond of, whereby the fast and slow movements are somewhat palindromic in their arrangement around a key central movement. The idea of the oxymoronic name is that each section of the orchestra is given a chance to shine, almost as a soloist does in a concerto. There's a certain poignancy in the serenity of the more affable passages, when you remember that Bartók was a dying man by the time he was writing this. Much of the tormented violence of his soul and his music has abated, to be replaced by a hard-won inner calm that seems to have eluded him throughout the length of his troubled life.
It's not all upbeat, however; the middle movement in particular is darkly dramatic, fusing his famous "night music" (a type of atmospheric nocturnal soundscape suggestive of all of the weird and unsettling activities of the dreaming mind) with moments of climactic tragedy. However, there is resolution of the tension, which is a novelty in Bartók The long struggle seems to be over, and the composer's customary bitter yet noble angst has at long last subsided into sanguinity. I would write more, but the Concerto For Orchestra is an incredibly complex piece of work which I don't yet feel that I have attained a good grasp of as yet. For a splendidly detailed analysis, have a look at http://www.halifaxchoralsociety.co.uk/bartok.html.
Dance Suite (1923)
An unassuming name for a brilliant piece of music. Don't be fooled by the innocuous title, for in the six movements for full orchestra you will find ambitious and grandiose music of astounding brilliance and power. It's a pretty short piece, but each movement is a gem, bursting with life and dazzling beauty. The underlying idea is peasant folk dances of Hungary and Romania, and the earthy exuberance of life close to nature is felt everywhere. In some strange way it's reminiscent of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, in that it feels like a celebration of the raw forces of nature.
The first three short movements flow into one another with impatient enthusiasm. The first proper pause comes after that, and the fourth and fifth movements consist of brooding night music, before the savagely energetic final movement is born out of the darkness like spring emerging from winter. The finale movement juxtaposes irrepressibly optimistic ejaculations with shocking eruptions of imposing and indomitable majesty.
Or, to put it in more simple terms, it's ****ing cool.
Hungarian Sketches (1931)
Keeping with the folksy theme, Hungarian Sketches are orchestral arrangements of short pieces already composed for other media. They are very nice, but these are quite humble little ditties rather than major works. The Bear Dance and the Swineherd's Dance are my favourites.
Romanian Folk Dances (1915)
The Romanian Folk Dances are more of the same thing as the sketches, but to my ear they are much stronger and make more of an impression. There are some excellent melodies with a distinctive eastern European flavour. A special mention must go to the amazing Romanian Polka and the two Fast Dances which form the last three parts. As with the Hungarian Sketches, much of the music here was transcribed verbatim from peasant music played by musicians that Bartók encountered on his folk music-gathering expeditions.
Music For Strings, Percussion, and Celesta (1936)
Unquestionably a masterpiece of structural, technical and expressive genius. This may be the single work of Bartók's that most fully captures the soulfulness of his music in all its breathtaking enormity. Darkly beautiful, impressive, delicate, horrifying, harsh and elegant. I can't heap enough superlatives on MFSPAC.
The ensemble used consists of a string orchestra divided into two halves, each with a full five sections: Basses, Cellos, Violas, and first and second violins; an arsenal of percussives; a harp; a piano; and a celesta. Instructions are given for the spatial-acoustic layout of the musicians on stage, with the two string ensembles placed on the left and right and the other instruments arranged with one or other group (typically ahead of his time, Bartók was using a "stereophonic" scheme to create specific effects). If you know Bartók's string quartets, you will know that he tends to deploy strings either abrasively, or with extreme sensitivity, and so it is here. Highly dissonant chords and extensive chromaticism are often used.
The famous first movement is remarkable for its carefully crafted yet musically seamless structure. Beginning from pianissimo, it takes the form of an entrancing and intricate fugue which grows and grows towards a stunning crescendo. The astonishing complexity of the theoretical (and even philosophical, in terms of the use of specific ratios!) underpinnings of the movement is way beyond the scope of this review, but I implore you to have a look at http://solomonsmusic.net/diss7.htm for a definitive analysis, complete with diagrams!
The allegro is no less impressive. Another example of the primal, earthy Bartók, the material is exhilarating, robust, powerful, awesome, dark, and demonic. The small orchestra play with tremendous vigour and force. Perhaps the reason why Bartók favoured smallish instrumental groups was that it enabled him to compose music that could be intimate and subtle, and yet also allow the uncompromised freedom to score extremely forceful passages that would be too much when played by a bigger ensemble.
In the third movement, night music, which is seldom far away, returns. The ruthless display of shock and awe that constituted the allegro subsides into a spectacular, ominous ambience, but even when the power and menace is not immediately palpable, it seems to be lurking imminent ready to swell up and burst forth again. As the movement starts claves and timpani beat out a nebulous tattoo in an empty space, subsequently joined by desolate string motifs being thrown back and forth. The timpani are played by altering their pitch with the pedal, giving a strange grumbling, moaning sound that intimates bad tidings. The bad tidings become more overt as the movement continues, sounding like a majestic invocation of primitive, rather unsympathetic, and all-powerful ancient gods, before returning again to the uneasy nocturnal chaos from whence it emerged.
Comparatively upbeat, the finale bursts with wild energy and giddiness, and a feeling that even approaches good-humour at times. It doesn't last though. Parts of this rough-hewn rampage of a movement seem to have one purpose - to coax as much noise as is humanly possible out of the instrumental resources present. It's not all frenzied hacking though, and there are contrasting sequences of sublime gorgeousness and gorgeousity, to quote Anthony Burgess.
I like Music For Strings, Percussion and Celesta. Very much indeed. It is a depiction of a Lovecraftian universe into which humanity is flung, adrift in the vacuum of uncaring space, surrounded by immeasurable forces that are oblivious to his puny existence. Why should music be polite, superficial, and nice? Why can't music capture all the facets of nature, from the monstrous to the divine? (I should probably calm down a bit now...getting kinda worked up.)
Divertimento (1939)
Written for string orchestra, this piece does not entirely adhere to the concept of a divertimento as a light easy-listening, although by Bartók standards, it is relatively easygoing and at least sometimes cheerful sounding. Having said that, there is no shortage of weirdness here with dense tone clusters and some jarring moments. The first movement contains both of these elements of good humour and uncomfortable tension.
The second, slow movement is another example of Bartók's patented "night music", eerie, forlorn, and mysterious. It's incredibly evocative and rather sinister, yet beautiful, particularly a chillingly memorable moment at the mid-point of the movement where the orchestra swells from near-silence to a menacing, throbbing tension. The movement is subtle, restrained, yet powerful. The dark shadow of fascism and war seems to fall over the music in this, Bartók's last work before he abandoned Europe and fled for America.
The last movement opens with a rousingly jovial feel not unlike the start of the last movement of Music For Strings Percussion and Celesta, and owes much to the composer's Hungarian and Romanian folk influences. The orchestration sounds concerto-like at times, with extensive solo playing.
The Miraculous Mandarin (1924)
The opening to this suite is amazing. It starts with strings playing with tremendous force, which is then joined by other instrument groups one by one to build to a massive tutti (the orchestra for this work is unusually large by any standards, and particularly for Bartók who didn't use big orchestras). The Miraculous Mandarin was written for a bizarre ballet about prostitutes, muggings, and generally bad goings on. The mood of the music is by turns frantic, violent, frightening and grotesque. It's pretty entertaining when you're in the mood for some noise, but subtlety is not the order of the day here. The strength of the piece, apart from its boundless tempestuous energy, is the inventive and colourful orchestration, all angrily rasping muted brass, shrieking woodwinds, and manic, whirling strings. The ballet itself was banned for being a bit too risqué after its first performance.
As with many ballet scores (I find) the musical interest flags at moments, but there are some striking and unforgettable episodes in the suite, and its sheer unadulterated bombast earns it much love from me.
The wikipedia page on the Miraculous Mandarin is very good and extremely detailed, explaining the plot and giving exhaustive technical analysis. I advise you to have a look.
In conclusion, I have only to add the following exhortation: buy this, or failing that, for the love of god, at least steal it.
. I went through the same thing when I wrote my CD reviews. 
Originally Posted by ErikinWest
