Hungarians in the World - Bartók and America / Matinée Concerts

Matinée Concerts
Hungarians in the World - Bartók and America

Program:
Stravinsky: Ragtime
Barber: Cello Concerto, Op. 22 - third movement (Molto allegro e appassionato)
Beethoven: String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132 - third movement (Molto adagio - Andante ‘Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der Lydischen Tonart')
Bartók: Piano Concerto No. 3, Sz. 119, BB 127 - second movement (Adagio religioso)
Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra, Sz. 116, BB 123 - first movement (Introduzione); third movement (Elegia); fifth movement (Finale) - excerpts

Béla Bartók wrote some of his most wonderful and, in the traditional sense of the word, beautiful music in the final years of his life, when he was living as a voluntary émigré in the United States. Both at that time and after the composer's death, there were many who wondered whether Bartók was making artistic concessions in these compositions: had he been influenced by the tastes of the American audience? This concert is a search for the answer to this question, as well as whether Bartók was influenced by the sounds of American birds (spoiler: he was) and whether he met any cowboys (spoiler: perhaps through music), while also allowing us to get to know this marvelous music from more close up.

Béla Bartók left for America on a ship from Portugal in the autumn of 1940, leaving behind both a warring Europe and a Hungary that was growing ever closer to Nazi Germany. Although he planned to return home, shortly after the end of World War Two he died in a New York hospital from a grave illness that had afflicted him for years. The music he wrote in those last years is incredibly beautiful: this composer once known for his extremely dissonant pieces had grown tame and classicised. This concert will not only provide a closer look at Bartók's most beautiful music, it also seeks an answer to the question of what kind of music Bartók found himself surrounded by in America in the middle of the 20th century. We will compare a concerto by Samuel Barber with a piano concerto Bartók composed in America, and at one point we will even listen to the singing of birds native to the New York region, because Bartók himself did. Serving as our guide in tracing Bartók's footsteps will be Szilveszter Szélpál, aided on the way by the expertise of musicologist Gergely Fazekas, with the music itself played by those most talented young musicians Ádám Balogh and Balázs Dolfin as soloists alongside the Danubia Orchestra under the baton of Dénes-Worowski Marcell.

Conductor: Marcell Dénes-Worowski

Featuring:
piano: Ádám Balogh
cello: Balázs Dolfin
Danubia Orchestra
music expert: Gergely Fazekas
moderator: Szilveszter Szélpál

Age: 9-16 year
Presented by: Müpa Budapest

Photo: Botond Sepsi