Search - Bartok, Goodman, Szigetti :: Contrasts for Clarinet, Violin & Piano

When the jazz and the classical meet one each other!

Hiram Gomez Pardo | Valencia, Venezuela | 10/04/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In December 1927, Bartok meets USA, far from thinking this will be his last stage to live and develop his best works.



The dark clouds of 1938 and the painful spring, Bela accepts through his fellow friend Joseph Szigeti, a special requirement made by Benny Goodman the King of the jazz Swing. Bartok had never written before for the clarinet and a violin, proposal that he amused. This evocating title indicates the opposition of these three instruments. Even the rhythmic web is complex and the language possesses unexpected effects, the whole audition is extremely pleasant and very clear



The humor delineates all the score even you can find traces of the primordial anguish of his the Concert for Orchestra, for instance, but , despite all these tonal restrictions and sharp dissonances, this work is one of the most beloved and preferred of this notable Hungarian musician, one of the supreme genius of the XX century whose musicality creativity perhaps be matched by his human quality.



Listening to the same composer - a remarkable pianist indeed - playing this score you find him in another level where the elements of the Hungarian Folklore acquire a sudden stature to get inside the infiniteness and the cosmic rapture. Bartok makes a true and dynamic journey through a huge vision of landscapes, dreamily passages pregnant with emotion but never sentimentalism.



Bartok is not atonal; these are apparent phenomenon that, at first sight, confer him that aspect.



"The empire of the dissonances is mine." Bela Bartok , 1905.



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