Search - Bela Bartok, Barbara Nissman :: Bartok by Nissman: First Recording of 1898 Sonata

Genesis of a style

Ian Dando | New Zealand | 12/01/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"A specialised issue. Certainly not for Bartok beginners. If you know so much Bartok that you are a nutter and are now curious to discover the genesis of the young Bartok's style, Nissan's well planned journey through his juvenilia and fringe works to maturity will really satisfy your curiosity. The early unpublished Sonata of 1898 gets its first recording. It shows the young 17 year old obsessed with Germanic romanticism. It is overwritten, clumsy and completely devoid of personality. Five years later his Rhapsody Op 1 shows him emulating the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody tradition. In Two Elegies (1908-9) Bartok by now has a foot in each century - still Lisztian but with emerging elements of Debussy and almost atonal in No 2. The Four Dirges are profound little miniatures in their lean simplicity - rather like late-period Liszt. They are based on Hungarian folk laments and show Bartok tapping into his beloved Hungarian peasant folklore. With the eight Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs Op 20, Bartok has reached maturity showing his manner of treating folklore that was to prove decisive in making him the greatest nationalist of all time. Nissman delineates the radically different styles of each work very incisively clearly showing the fruits of her insights in her recent book "Bartok and the Piano"."