Geffen Hall: Valery Gergiev Conducts Bartók

There was a great deal of excitement, at least for me, as the London Symphony Orchestra, led by Valery Gergiev, performed an all-Bartók program at David Geffen Hall yesterday afternoon.  Although Gergiev is known primarily for his mastery of the Russian repertoire, he did an impressive job when I saw him conduct Bluebeard's Castle at the Met Opera this past February and I was interested in hearing how well he would do with Bartók's orchestral works.

To me, Bartók was, along with Mahler and Stravinsky, one of the three greatest composers of the twentieth century.  Each of them in his own way changed the face of modern music.  Of their different approaches, though, it may have been Bartók's grounding in ethnomusicology that in the end was the most radical.  I don't think Bartók is often enough given credit for the considerable influence he exerted on later composers or sufficiently appreciated for the innovations he introduced into his work.  There's a poignancy to the last days he spent ailing and largely unrecognized in New York City.  Whenever I have an opportunity then to hear Bartók's music performed by quality musicians I jump at the chance.

The program opened with the Dance Suite, Sz. 77, BB 86a (1923).  This six movement work (in Hungarian, Táncszvit) was composed in 1923 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the amalgamation of Buda and Pest into a single city.  It was Bartók's first commission and proved to be one of his most popular and accessible works, so much so that he later completed an arrangement of it for solo piano.  One reason for the work's success was the composer's ability to take Hungarian folk melodies as sources and then rewrite them in his own idiom.  This had come about as a result of the composer's travels through the countryside, beginning in 1908 in the company of Zoltán Kodály, in an attempt to record ethnic Magyar folk melodies before they were lost to the encroachment of civilization.  This research, invaluable in itself, provided him with many of the themes that can be heard in the present suite.  I thought he most interesting part of the work was the fourth movement "night music" marked molto tranquillo.

The next work was the Piano Concerto No. 2 in G major, Sz. 95, BB 101 (1930-1931).  The work is considered one of the most challenging in the piano repertoire, one which pianist András Schiff - who has recorded all three concertos with Iván Fischer and the BFO - has described as a "a finger-breaking piece."  This even though Bartók claimed to have deliberately tried to make the work less technically difficult than his First Concerto.  Bartók's view of the piano as a percussive instrument is readily apparent in the Second Concerto, particularly in the piano's dialog with the tympani in the second movement.  The influence of Stravinsky can be heard in the first movement in which the strings are entirely silent just as they are in that composer's 1924 Piano Concerto.  The soloist on Sunday afternoon was Yefim Bronfman and he gave as powerful performance of this work as one could wish.  He demonstrated in each movement his full mastery of the piece and at its conclusion brought the audience to its feet for a standing ovation after which he remained onstage to play an encore.

After intermission, the orchestra returned to play the Concerto for Orchestra, Sz. 116, BB 123 (1943).  The work, originally commissioned by Koussevitzky at a time when the composer was ill and badly in need of financial assistance, was so titled because each section of the orchestra is called upon at one point or another to take the part of soloist.  This is a colorful work that sums up many of Bartók's concerns as a composer - from the folk melodies in the second movement, to the use of "night music" in the third movement to the dance rhythms in the final movement.  I've heard the work performed many times before, but this rendition - brilliantly conducted by Gergiev - was the best I can remember.