Bartok Solo Piano Works Volume 1

Bela Bartok (Performer), pianist June de Toth (Composer, Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Bela Bartok, pianist June de Toth
• Composer: pianist June de Toth
• Audio CD (December 15, 1999)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Eroica Classical Recordings
• ASIN: B00000FDGM
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #735,629 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Seven Sketches: Portrait of a Girl

2. Seven Sketches: See Saw, Dickory Daw

3. Seven Sketches: Lento

4. Seven Sketches: Non troppo lento

5. Seven Sketches: Roumanian Folk Melody

6. Seven Sketches: In Walachian Style

7. Seven Sketches: Poco lento

8. Sonata 1926: Allegro moderato

9. Sonata 1926: Sostenuto e peasante

10. Sonata 1926: Allegro molto

11. Fifteen Hungarian Peasant Songs and Dances: Four Old Tunes

12. Fifteen Hungarian Peasant Songs and Dances: Scherzo

13. Fifteen Hungarian Peasant Songs and Dances: Ballad

14. Fifteen Hungarian Peasant Songs and Dances: Nine Old Dance Tunes

15. Four Dirges: Adagio

16. Four Dirges: Andante

17. Four Dirges: Poco lento

18. Four Dirges: Assai andante

19. Allegro Barbaro

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This CD is an ideal introduction to Bartok's piano music., April 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Bartok Solo Piano Works Volume 1 (Audio CD)

Review from AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE March/April 1999

This set (Bartok's Solo Piano Works, Volumes 1, 2 and 3) would make an ideal introduction to Bartok's piano music.

The music speaks for itself, as if Ms de Toth were loathe to run any interference. In the wistful 'Street of Istvand', for example, or in the rugged yet oddly seductive sailor song 'In the Harbor of Nagyvarad', her no-nonsense surefootedness gives ample voice to Bartok's nostalgic melancholia.

Indeed, in these works, part of the 42 Hungarian Folk Songs for Children, she fathoms each as a kind of apposite gestuary of hemiolas and unnerving hesitations, and as the stuff of musical speech.

Capturing the essentially trochaic inflections of Hungarian speech with the knowing temperament of a native (Ms de Toth is full blood Hungarian), she lays out the keyboard songs with the patrician air of an old storyteller at a family gathering.

Take particular note of her attractive readings of the 14 Bagatelles: these she portrays with a kind of arid simplicity that enhances their now playful, now lonely ethos.

In her exhaustive survey of his complete piano works (these are the first three out of seven CDs), June de Toth proves herself a smart, solid, and reliable pianist. YOUNG