Béla Bartók (1881-1945) was a known Hungarian modernist composer of the 20th century. Together with Constantin Brăiloiu (1893-1958) he has been a pionneer in the field of ethnomusicology, exploring Hungary, parts of Eastern Europe and even northern Africa and Turkey to record folk music and then transcribe it. His transcriptions of Romanian folklore are among the most complete to this date. A distinguished pianist as we can here from the surviving recordings (e.g the amazing pianism we hear in his Scarlatti), he composed several now well-established pieces of the repertoire like the Piano Concerto No.3 or the Out of Doors suite.

The 15 Hungarian Peasant Songs (Sz. 71, BB 79) are a set of early miniature pieces divided in two groups. The opus starts with Four old tunes that convey the profoundity of long-gone ages, all to be played with a sheer sense of parlando rubato. The final song has an interesting improvisational form of ballade theme with variations and marks the ending of this first group of pieces in assertive fortissimo. It is followed by Old dance tunes which is the better known part of this opus. Most of it has also been orchestrated in Hungarian Peasant Songs, (Sz. 100, BB 107) that also contains the preceding theme with variations which is beautifully developped.

Here is my interpretation of these pieces played live at Fondation des États-Unis in Paris in January 2023, together with a group picture of Bartók, Walter Gropius and Paul Klee. Enjoy!

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