Bartók. Stravinsky

Béla Bartók spent his entire life associating with outstanding violinists, was friends with many of them, often performed together with them and he wrote a plethora of works for violin, among them the marvellous Sonata for Solo Violin for Yehudi Menuhin. The composer wrote two concerti for violin and orchestra. The first (1907) was sent to his beloved, Stefi Geyer and, sadly, remained in her archive for more than half a century until it was premiered. The Second Concerto has no official series number. This time the recipient (or rather the man who commissioned it) was the Hungarian violinist Zoltán Székely. The concerto was written in Switzerland in the summer months of 1937 and orchestrated the next summer. Bartók’s initial idea was to create a vast work in the form of variations, but the violinist convinced him to return to the traditional form of the concerto in three parts. Something of the initial idea, however, remained – the second part comes in the form of variations and in the finale themes of the first part are expanded and developed. The principal theme uses all twelve sounds of the chromatic scale. In composing it, Bartók wished to show Schoenberg how to write such themes while remaining in the framework of tonality.And truly this theme is the fruit of wonderful melodious inspiration that flows throughout the entire concerto.
Béla Bartók’s ballet The Miraculous Mandarin (1919) was written to the shocking libretto by Melchior Lengyel, and its characters are a girl of easy virtue and three thieving vagrants. The protagonist is a Chinese mandarin, and it would be more correct to call him not miraculous but enchanted or seized with passion. The robbers try to suffocate him, slay him and hang him, but the mandarin remains alive until the girl eventually kisses him. Probably the plot in a way reflected the details of Rasputin’s murder that shocked Europe. Today in musical theatre harsher themes are not a rarity, although for a century choreographers who staged The Miraculous Mandarin preferred to create a new libretto. Bartók reworked the piece on several occasions. In particular, having just made some cuts, he turned it into a symphonic suite that is frequently performed. It is incredibly expressive music. Bartók was generous with radical means, right up to the glissando of the kettledrums which make the sound heavier and create a gloomy atmosphere. But there are also other passages that are completely different, written in a subtle fashion and in the spirit of impressionism, while Gennady Nikolaevich Rozhdestvensky has praised the suite for its “deep lyricism” and “utterly magical waltzes.”
Anna Bulycheva

Diaghilev’s Ballets russes production of The Firebird on 25 June 1910 at the Opéra de Paris proved a sensational success. Created in close co-operation with the choreographer Michel Fokine and the designer Golovin with outstanding ballet dancers, The Firebird was, in the words of one Parisian critic, “a miracle of the enchanting balance between movements, sounds and forms.” Soon after the premiere, Stravinsky composed the Firebird orchestral suite (1911), not just because of the success of the music but also due to his wish to perfect the music in the concert hall. In 1919 a new suite emerged in which the composer abandoned the grandiose full orchestra used in the score for the ballet. Twenty-five years later, in 1945, Stravinsky once again edited his orchestration of the suite. In the 1919 version the suite includes the episodes Introduction, Dance of the Firebird, Round Dances of the Tsarevnas, Kashchei’s Infernal Dance, the Cradle Song and Finale.