Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 01/28/2017, uploaded on 01/28/2017

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Piano Sonata, Sz. 80 Béla Bartók

This sonata was composed in 1926, a year known to musicologists as Bartók’s “piano year,” when he underwent a creative shift in part from Beethovenian intensity to a more Bachian craftsmanship.

The work opens in spirited fashion, with native Hungarian rhythmic and thematic elements over repeated E major and highly dissonant chords. The melodic themes used in the first movement are fragmented modal scales usually no wider than a perfect fifth, and projected over an ostinato. The second movement makes use of several timbres, evocative of a percussion ensemble and it alludes to the sounds he would later explore in the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion (Sz. 110) in 1937. The third movement, having the fastest tempo, seems almost suggestive of the Orient with its use of pentatonic scales and ornamental styles reminiscent of a quality of singing found in Peking Opera. Bartók’s fascination with the music of China is also evident in his ballet, The Miraculous Mandarin, Op. 19, (Sz. 73). Its celebratory atmosphere is the perfect close and provides a massive display of virtuosic block chords and octaves. Bartók, himself a superb pianist, chose this work to be the only one for solo piano bearing the singular title of Sonata.    Notes by Wikipedia

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.