Béla Bartók - Divertimento; Dance Suite (Pierre Boulez)

Information

Composer: Béla Bartók

• Dance Suite, Sz 77
• Two Pictures, Op. 10, Sz 46
• Hungarian Sketches, Sz 97
• Divertimento for String Orchestra, Sz 113

Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Pierre Boulez, conductor

Date: 1995

Label: Deutsche Grammophon

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Review

The ‘Dance Suite’ could almost be thought of as a dance-symphony being in five connected movements of contrasting tempi. It was commissioned in 1923 along with longer works by Kodály and Dohnányi. Bartók tells us the sources of his dances. The first rather bizarre dance is Arab, the second Hungarian and later there are some from Rumania. These are melodies he had picked up on his pre-war travels, all mixed together. The piece became his first major success and under Boulez it works very well.

The Hungarian Sketches go well enough here. There are five of them: orchestrations of piano pieces which had been written when the composer was in his 20s. Paul Griffiths in his book on Bartók, which I will refer to again, in ‘The Master Musician’ series (Dent 1984) quotes a letter from Bartók to his mother: “… This is the sort of thing that will be performed because the music is pleasing, it is not very difficult to play and it is by a ‘known’ composer.”

The ‘Two Pictures’ form a typical Bartók triptych. They play without a break. The first is translated here as ‘In Full Flower’ which is often considered Bartók’s most Debussian work, Paul Griffiths remarks “the handling of the orchestra still owes at least as much to Strauss”. Although the second picture is ‘Village Dance’ it also has, in its Scherzo-with-two-trios format some Debussian interludes and whole tone scale passages. Whole-tone scales, like pentatonic and modal ones can be found also in the folk music that Bartók was still in the midst of collecting. Boulez has his own way with Debussy which he adopts here - that is he allows every detail through but I feel tends to lack warmth and suavity.

The disc ends with the three movement Divertimento, which confirms for me the fact that Boulez just does not consistently ‘get’ this aspect of Bartók with his lack of authentic ‘bite’. The middle movement drags and loses its way; the third one is generally too slow. I am still drawn to Jean-Jacques Kantorow on BIS (CD 740) with the Tapiola Sinfonietta who really lets rip, knocking four minutes off Boulez’s rendition.

— Gary Higginson

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Béla Bartók (25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist and ethnomusicologist who is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century. As an ethnomusicologist, his fieldwork with the composer Zoltán Kodály formed the basis for all later research in the field. Bartók employed folk themes and rhythms into his own music, achieving a style that was nationalistic and deeply personal. His notable works include the opera Bluebeard's Castle (1911), 6 string quartets (1908–39), the Mikrokosmos piano set, Concerto for Orchestra (1943), and 3 piano concertos (1926, 1931 & 1945).

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Pierre Boulez (26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and music theorist. A leading figure in avant-garde music, he was noted for his uncompromising commitment to modernism and the trenchant, polemical tone. Boulez was also one of the most prominent conductors of his generation. In a career lasting more than sixty years, he was music director of the New York Philharmonic, chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra, and made frequent appearances with many others.

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