Bartok and Gypsy music by Sebestyen, Muzsikas and Takacs Quartet

BARTOK: From The Fields To The Concert Hall

A live concert interspersing his compositions 

with the inspirational sources, 

including Bartok's own recordings 

of Roma Musicians 

Having always felt intimate with Bartok's as well as gypsy music of the roma, I've thoroughly enjoyed playing this recording, loud. It helps to have recently read "Bury Me Standing"- comes from the saying, 'Bury me standing, I've been on my knees all my life'.

"We have music, and if somebody doesn’t have music, then they’re nothing."

-Šelja Bajrami, Plemetina

"The acclaimed Takacs String Quartet joins the Hungarian folk ensemble Muzsikas (with singer Marta Sebestyen, whose inimitable voice you may recall haunting the soundtrack to "The English Patient") to celebrate Hungarian composer Bela Bartok...

When the members of the Takacs Quartet and Muzsikas combine for a concert, they delight in making clear the connections between Bartok's own music and his folk-music obsessions. For example, they alternate movements from some of Bartok's best-known pieces (Romanian Folk Dances, String Quartet No. 4) with the real village dances he collected in the field — both the actual old scratchy records and their own live versions thereof..."

The rest of the source material is on

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103733863

May 6 2009

Jordan Hall, in Boston

Takacs String Quartet

Muzsikas with Marta Sebestyen

Bela Bartok's field recordings

CONCERT PROGRAM

Bartok: Violin Duos (with source tunes)

Track 01

- Torontal Dances (Muzsikas)

- "Ardeleana" (historic Bartok field recording)

- Duo No. 44

Track 02

- "Shoe of My Horse" (Marta Sebestyen)

- Duo No. 28

- Duo No. 32

- "Jocul Barbatesc" (Marta Sebestyen)

Track 03

Bartok: Sonatina (with traditional tunes)

- Bagpipes (Takacs Qt.)

- Bear Dance (Takacs Qt.)

- Bear Dance from Gyimes (Muzsikas)

Track 04

Traditional: Ballad of the Murdered Shepherd

Track 05

Bartok: Romanian Folk Dances (with source tunes)

- Bota es Invertita (Muzsikas)

- Stick Dance (Takacs Qt.)

- Waistband Dance (Takacs Qt.)

- "Pe Loc" (Muzsikas)

- Hornpipe Dance (Takacs Qt.)

- Romanian Polka (Takacs Qt.)

from NPR internet radio, rec. @256 kbps

Enjoy, spread far and wide, and please attend these performers' events when they're in town!

Kurtag: Akhmatova Poems, Splinters, Troussova Messages live from Carnegie Hall Jan 31, 2009

If you're not familiar with Gyorgy Kurtag, 

Hurry Up Please Its Time .

Eotvos Conducts Kurtag at

 Carnegie Hall, 2009

Peter Eötvös,conductor

Natalia Zagorinskaya, soprano 

Katalin Károlyi, mezzo-soprano

Ildikó Vékony, cimbalom

Miklós Perényi, cello 

UMZE Ensemble

Amadinda Percussion Group

Zankel Hall, New York City

(alt. art thanks to Arno)

January 31st, 2009

MR3 Bartók Radio internet stream 320 kbit/s

recorded and uploaded by KaKa (thank for the good s.. uh, stuff)

The concert included Ligeti performances, which KaKa has linked in the comments.

Messages of the Late R.V. Troussova, Op. 17

Splinters, Op. 6c

Four Poems by Anna Akhmatova, Op. 41- World Premiere:

• I. Pushkin (1997) pour soprano solo, dédié à Natalia Melnikova.
  
• II. Alexandru Bloku (1997) pour soprano solo.
  
• III. Plach - Prichitanie (1997), pour soprano et instruments, dédié à Márta Papp.
  
• IV. Voronezh (in progress), pour soprano et ensemble.
  

Kurtag's music is mostly super short pieces, linked together by many levels of connective tissue. Perfect for the ADHD set hungry for depth. Any given piece feels like an emotional snapshot; it gives some mechanism of my inner life expression in a quick, immediate and faithful language. It feels right.

Bruce Hodges from MusicWeb International's site had some illuminating comments on this concert. Calling the first part "uncompromising", He writes about "Messages of the Late R. V. Troussova, a 21-song cycle using wrenching, hallucinatory texts by Rimma Dalos, a Russian poet living in Hungary.  When soprano Natalia Zagorinskaya began "Odinochestvo" ("Loneliness"), her voice seemed a bit small for the job.  But then it turned out that her wan tone, capped with a desolate glissando at the end, was merely her strategy for the opening, rather than revealing all of Kurtág's colors at once. 

The cycle grows progressively stranger, with a cumulative effect that is harrowing.  The introduction to "Chastushka" (which begins, "Bite me on the head, bite me on the breast!") sounds like a deranged marching band.  The composer sets "Great misery—that's love.  Is there any greater happiness?" with delicate cimbalom strokes, as if the words would somehow be comforting.  "Kameshki" ("Pebbles") uses kaleidoscopic instrumental colors to depict the stones, and in "Tonkaia igla" ("A slender needle"), the effect is piercing, like glass breaking.  Ms. Zagorinskaya was in complete control of Kurtág's unconventional meldings of music and text, and the UMZE Ensemble provided exquisitely calibrated touches of sound—truly, sometimes that's all they were—to assist her.

In what may have been the night's sleeper hit, Ildikó Vékony gave a virtuoso performance of Splinters, originally conceived for guitar and adapted for cimbalom.  In four compact movements totaling seven minutes, it covers a huge array of textures, before reaching a haunting ending with a low D, repeated softly as it fades into the distance.  Ms. Vékony's concentration on the instrument was almost supernatural.  Only after a respectful silence at the end did the audience break out into whoops of delight.  As she took her curtain calls she seemed slightly stunned, as if she didn't quite know what she had accomplished.

Ms. Zagorinskaya and the UMZE musicians returned for the world premiere of Four Poems by Anna Akhmatova, written over the span of a decade.  It is brief, gossamer and adds a huge array of percussion instruments to the chamber ensembl

e.  The final song, "Voronezh," incorporates a whip and a siren to evoke "…a whole town…encased in ice…Trees, walls, snow, as if under glass."

Kurtag: a random sampling of spare, deep beauty. Three in-concert recordings.

 Gyorgy Kurtag   (b.1926):"I keep coming back to the realization that one note is almost enough"

01-06 Six moments musicaux op.44 (1999-2005) (14:04)

Arditti String Quartet

STRASBOURG, France

Palais des FÍtes

26 sept 2008 

Festival Musica

fm (France Musique, 26 dec 2008), Uploaded by Uncle Meat (DIME)

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07-08 Tre pezzi per violino e pianoforte Op. 14e (7:49)

Patricia Kopatchinskaja - violin

Mihaela Ursuleasa - piano

Conservatoire, Bruxelles (BE)

3 december 2007

uploaded by fadoze (DIME also)

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09-14 Messages For Orchestra Op. 34

Cambreling, Sylvain, conductor

Staatskapelle Dresden

Live performance; date, place & provenance unknown (to me!?!)

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the txt file includes extended Comments by J. R. Robinson (whose eloquence illustrates feelings I share regarding this wonderful musicmaker), excerpted here :

"...Kurtág is a composer steeped in tradition without himself being traditional... He bares his soul with a [Romantic] sense of drama, but everything expressed is distilled to its essence. Every note is telling, every silence is ripe with anticipation. His uncanny sense of time and proportion and his affinity with the silence between notes allow him to generate and maintain tension with the utmost economy of means. 

Aside from the sheer concentration of it all, Kurtág's music communicates in a powerfully direct, speech-like way. It's not analogous to Janacek's overt use of Moravian speech patterns or anything so tangible; it's a subtle, sublimated communication in Kurtág's own uniquely expressive musical language -- a universal language spoken with a Hungarian accent. 

You often get the impression that the music is speaking directly to you in an intimate, almost confessional way. 

Ligeti once described Kurtág as "intelligent, sincere, and simple in a highly complex way." That description could just as well apply to his friend's music..."

Also, you'll find, in there, a primer on what to buy to hear more Kurtag!

Enjoy,

Guillermo