Bartok: Sonatas & Folk Dances / James Ehnes

$10.99
Label
Chandos
Release Date
January 29, 2013
Format
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    Featuring ⌄
    • COMPOSER
      BARTOK, BELA
    • PERFORMER
      Ehnes, Armstrong
    Product Details ⌄
    • RELEASE DATE
      January 29, 2013
    • UPC
      095115175224
    • CATALOG NUMBER
      CHAN 10752
    • LABEL
      Chandos
    • NUMBER OF DISCS
      1
    • GENRE
      Chamber Music & Recitals
    Works ⌄

    1. I. Tempo di ciaccona

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes

    2. II. Fuga: Risoluto, non troppo vivo

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes

    3. III. Melodia: Adagio

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes

    4. IV. Presto

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes

    5. I. Allegro moderato (molto rubato)

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong

    6. II. Andante

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong

    7. III. Vivace

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong

    8. No. 1. Andante - Un poco più lento (arr. of For Children, Vol. 2, No. 34)

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong

    9. No. 2. Allegretto (arr. of For Children, Vol. 2, No. 36)

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong

    10. No. 3. Lento, ma non troppo (arr. of For Children, Vol. 1, No. 17)

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong

    11. No. 4. Allegro (arr. of For Children, Vol. 2, No. 31)

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong

    12. No. 5. Lento, poco rubato (arr. of For Children, Vol. 1, No. 16)

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong

    13. No. 6. Allegretto (arr. of For Children, Vol. 1, No. 14)

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong

    14. No. 7. Allegretto, scherzando (arr. of For Children, Vol. 1, No. 19)

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong

    15. No. 8. Sostenuto - Allegro - Adagio (arr. of For Children, Vol. 1, No. 8)

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong

    16. No. 9. Allegro robusto (arr. of For Children, Vol. 1, No. 21)

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong

    17. No. 1. Parlando (arr. of For Children, Vol. 2, No. 28)

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong

    18. No. 2. Andante non molto (arr. of For Children, Vol. 1, No. 18)

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong

    19. No. 3. Allegro vivace (arr. of For Children, Vol. 2, No. 42)

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong

    20. No. 4. Andante sostenuto (arr. of For Children, Vol. 2, No. 33)

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong

    21. No. 5. Allegro (arr. of For Children, Vol. 1, No. 6)

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong

    22. No. 6. Andante (arr. of For Children, Vol. 1, No. 13)

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong

    23. No. 7. Poco vivace (arr. of For Children, Vol. 2, No. 38)

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong

    24. No. 1. Jocul cu bata (Stick Dance)

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong

    25. No. 2. Braul (Sash Dance)

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong

    26. No. 3. Pe loc (In One Place)

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong

    27. No. 4. Buciumeana (Horn Dance)

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong

    28. No. 5. Poarga Romaneasca (Romanian Polka)

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong

    29. No. 6. Maruntel (Fast Dance)

      Composer: Béla Bartók

      Performer: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong


Decades before World Music became an established category, Béla Bartók was roaming the Eastern European countryside, collecting folk tunes with fellow composer Zoltan Kodaly. He snapped up songs from his native Hungary, but also toted his phonograph on tune-gathering trips to Romania, Slovakia and Turkey. He spent much of 1943 on a research fellowship at Columbia University transcribing Serbo-Croatian folk songs.

As violinist James Ehnes and pianist Andrew Armstrong demonstrate on this new recording, Bartók fashioned some vibrant and colorful arrangements from his folk journeys.

Ehnes has been a familiar face in New York lately; last summer, he performed on a New York Philharmonic broadcast from Van Cortlandt Park and also made a stop for a WQXR Café Concert. He’s been busy in the recording studio too; this wraps a three-part Bartók cycle.

The three sets of folk songs on this recording illustrate how Bartók embraced the tangy exotic modes and wild irregular rhythms of the countryside, which freed him from "the tyranny of major and minor scales," as he put it. Two sets of Hungarian Folks Songs features some jaunty dialogues with the piano and some added effects – pizzicato, harmonics – to make a splash. The Romanian Folk Dances ratchet up the momentum further, particularly in the final “Polka” and the rollicking “Fast Dance.”

The sonatas offer a striking contrast but there's much to admire here too. A Bach-like grandeur underscores the unaccompanied Sonata (1944), written in the in the final months of Bartók's life for Yehudi Menuhin, and yet more traces of Hungarian folk melodies turn up in the Violin Sonata in E minor, written a half-century earlier.

-- WQXR, Album of the Week [1/20/2013]