Classical Music | Ensemble Music

Recorded on 12/04/2007, uploaded on 01/09/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Romanian Folk Dances            Béla Bartók (arr. Willner)

Bela Bartok was an indefatigable collector and arranger of the folk tunes of his native Hungary, and indeed of all central Europe.  One of his favorite hunting-grounds was the region of Transylvania, ethnically Romanian and now part of that country, but until 1918 part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  In 1915, he made a piano arrangement of seven dances which he had taken down in 1910 and 1912 in four different Transylvanian villages.  Two years later he transcribed them for small orchestra, and this version was published in 1922 with the title Romanian Folk Dances; the publisher later also issued two popular arrangements of the pieces, one for violin and piano by the violinist Zoltan Szekely, the other for string orchestra by the German-Czech violinist and teacher Arthur Willner (1881-1959).   The seven dance tunes, most of which Bartok heard played on the fiddle are arranged into a continuous sequence with a fast-slow-fast outline; the final group of three fast numbers begins with a 'Romanian polka' in 3/4+3/4+2/4 meter, and continues with two examples of the 'Maruntel', which was accompanied originally by singing and rhythmic shouting.      Drostan Hall

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.