Robert Mann plays Bartok Solo Sonata

 Bartok Solo Sonata / Contrasts

Robert Mann, Violin - Stanely Drucker, Clarinet - Leonid Hambro, Piano

Here is the first recording of Bartok's Solo Sonata for Violin with the original last movement quarter-tones.  (Menuhin, who commissioned it, of course made the first recording, but it included changes to the original score.)  It is important for that alone, but it is much more, a brilliant performance of a great, late piece by Bartok.  The Constrasts, with Stanley Drucker and Leonid Hambro is one of the best performances I've heard, and with much better sound than Bartok's own recording with Benny Goodman and Szigeti. I have no personal need to look further than those two recordings, though, lover of Bartok that I am, I have others.

The recording was undertaken by Bartok records under the direction of  Bela Bartok's son, Peter. and they are masterfully recorded. I had a very clean LP to transfer using the Shure V15  V-MR. It only required a little declicking and very very little surface vibration removal.  The renovated file sound good, but adds nothing to the surprisingly full bodied, detailed,  and focused sound of the original from 1949.  Peter Bartok was a sound engineer, and quite a good one to go by this and several other Bartok Records productions.

I've included the record jacket notes, separating the three text columns into 3 jpegs for easier reading. I only take issue to the opening line of the text, which asserts that, "Bartok could not, with any accuracy, be classified as a 'modern' composer in the conventional sense of the term."  While it is true that Bartok is deeply influenced by classic forms and folk music, his application of those influences places him squarely in 20th century modernism.  The Solo Violin Sonata is "Bachian", but could by no means be mistaken for Bach. The third and forth string quartets have deep classical formal roots, and yet could not have been written other than the time they were composed, nor by anyone but Bartok. Denying him his place in the pantheon of great moderns is simply misguided, even if he mostly has a place among the  greatest of the greats of all time.

Links to all the files, Flac, MP3, and album and CD art, can be found here: 

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/cbyo4aby1l368/Bartok_Robert_Mann_Solo_Sonata_Constrasts

Tibor Serly conducts Bartok Divertimento

Bartok Records recordings of Bartok's music were often made by musicians with some personal association with the composer. Their importance to performance history is inestimable. If by now some of them seem far from conclusive readings, they are normally reasonably well recorded, well pressed for their time, and well, if not always definitively performed. This is a very nice recording led by Tibor Serly, who has the distinction of having been chosen to complete the orchestration of the last measures of Bartok's 3rd Piano Concerto and to decipher the cryptic shorthand in which the composer left his viola concerto, commissioned by William Primrose, to produce a performing edition. A composer of some talent himself, Serly fills the record with his own affecting arrangement for strings of Gesualdo's madrigal Dulcissima Mia Vita, and a string arrangement of Domenico Scarlatti's Cat's Fugue by A.W. Kramer. Baroque purists will have fits, but the Gesualdo, in particular, is delicious. I had uploaded the renovated files, but Buster at Big 10-Inch Record brought my attention to the fact that this LP is still available from Bartok Records, linked below. Link to buy LP from Bartok Records

I do not believe these are readily available anymore, so I am restoring my links to the renovated files I originally posted:  

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/ii2hsp4ow1phi/Bartok_Divertimento._Tibor_Serly

Tibor Kozma plays Bartok

This is a lovely record from Bartok Records, their #918, though I don't believe it is any longer available on their site. Recorded in very natural sounding monaural, this very well used record really came to life after running a decrackle filter. I did a further dehiss, and a high pass with a cutoff of 80hz to get rid of some rumble without compromising the fullness of the bass. To my ears it sounds pretty good.

Tibor Kozma was a beloved conducting instructor at the University of Indiana at Bloomington, http://www.libraries.iub.edu/index.php?pageId=3900#kozma , for many years after conducting and coaching at the Metropolitan Opera, where he made a number of recordings. He did at least one other project for Bartok Records, as pianist on a record of folk songs arrranged by Bartok and Kodaly -- Bartok Records #904. Wikipedia has an informative, basic article on him. He does a quite creditable job here, even if he does lose himself briefly in the final measures of the Folk Dances. Those are ubiquitously available, though, (by Foldes, Schiff, and Sandor, to name only three in my personal collection) while recordings of the Bagatelles and Christmas Carols, where he acquits himself nicely, are harder to come by.

The Bagatelles are a revelation, presenting Bartok's early harmonic thinking in charming, short piano pieces that serve as a primer to elements that will remain in the master's musical vocabulary throughout some of his greatest masterpieces. To hear them presented here with such disarming simplicity is to remember once again the deep roots in Balkan folk music of Bartokian modernism.

Link to all files