Kate Molleson chooses her favourite recording of Béla Bartók s String Quartet No. 5.
Throughout his career Bartók was obsessed with folk music, attracted by the invigorating irregularity its rhythms, its modes, often so contrary to conventional scale patterns, its unorthodox harmonic inflections and deep-rooted connection to landscape and people. He spent 40 years of his life collecting, transcribing and studying the indigenous music of central Europe, including his native Hungary.
By the time of the First World War, folk music pervasively and profoundly informed Bartók s own music and its nevertheless uncompromising modernist style and rigorous formal organisation. By 1934, the year he wrote his fifth and penultimate string quartet, Bartók s musical style had become more approachable and this wonderful work, at once playful and profound, so full of humanity and packing a huge emotional punch, is among the great string quartets of any century.
Gramophone Thursday, February 25, 2021
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Rome s S. Cecilia streams John Eliot Gardiner concert
14 Dec, 2020
The music is by Rossini (
The Thieving Magpie), Mozart (
piano concerto no 17) and Mendelssohn (symphony no 4, the so called Italian symphony). The pianist is Piotr Anderszewski.
Listeners can access the concert on Idagio or via the S. Cecilia website.
Idagio.com is an on-line concert platform, available for musicians, ensembles and orchestras to reach worldwide audiences for a small fee.
Each concert costs €9.90. The concerts are streamed live and are then available for another 24 hours after the initial broadcast.
The platform also provides a variety of interactive features available to the musicians such as introductions to the concert and reflections and chats with the audience afterwards in what is called a Virtual Green Room.