Bela Bartok: Mikrokosmos

Bela Bartok (Artist), Gyorgy Sandor (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (February 9, 1993)
• Number of Discs: 2
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B0000028MQ
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #269,428 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

Disc: 1

1. Mikrokosmos: Volume 1 - 1-6. Six Unison Melodies

2. Mikrokosmos: Volume 1 - 7. Dotted Notes

3. Mikrokosmos: Volume 1 - 8. Repetition (1)

4. Mikrokosmos: Volume 1 - 9. Syncopation (1)

5. Mikrokosmos: Volume 1 - 10. With Alternate Hands

6. Mikrokosmos: Volume 1 - 11. Parallel Motion

7. Mikrokosmos: Volume 1 - 12. Reflection

8. Mikrokosmos: Volume 1 - 13. Change of Position

9. Mikrokosmos: Volume 1 - 14. Question and Answer

10. Mikrokosmos: Volume 1 - 15. Village Song

See all 88 tracks on this disc

Disc: 2

1. Mikrokosmos: Volume 4 - 97. Notturno

2. Mikrokosmos: Volume 4 - 98. Thumbs Under

3. Mikrokosmos: Volume 4 - 99. Hands Crossing

4. Mikrokosmos: Volume 4 - 100. In Folk Song Style

5. Mikrokosmos: Volume 4 - 101. Diminished Fifth

6. Mikrokosmos: Volume 4 - 102. Harmonics

7. Mikrokosmos: Volume 4 - 103. Minor and Major

8. Mikrokosmos: Volume 4 - 104. Wandering through the Keys (a & b)

9. Mikrokosmos: Volume 4 - 105. Game (with two five-tone scales)

10. Mikrokosmos: Volume 4 - 106. Children's Song

See all 57 tracks on this disc

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential recording

Bartók's Mikrokosmos ("Little World") essentially comprises 153 teaching pieces, divided into six books of progressive difficulty. These works make ideal vehicles for budding piano students who are ready to face the myriad challenges of 20th-century keyboard music. They also reveal the kernels of the Hungarian composer's uncompromising compositional style. György Sándor was a piano pupil of Bartók's, and his fluid, perceptive playing is unfailingly idiomatic, from the simple, canon-like exercises at the start to the demanding Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm that crown the cycle. The mono engineering is thin but acceptable. Suffice it to say that the composer would have been proud of what his pupil achieves here. --Jed Distler

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The slender difference that makes the great difference!, September 28, 2006

By 

Hiram Gomez Pardo (Valencia, Venezuela) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bela Bartok: Mikrokosmos (Audio CD)

At the actual moments it's hard to find out that unusual and missed way of play Bartok with these well known dissonant inflections, for all of us who had the immense privilege to watch this legendary pianist twice in Caracas in the seventies and eighties. To this reviewer, it will be absolutely impossible to forget his egregious presence and powering [...], steeled phrasing hovered by that special reverberation and acidic lyricism at the moment to play Out of doors that cold night of December 9, 1982.

Without another intention in mind, but intending to illustrate and motive the newcomer listener, I would say that in just few counted occasions (Richter and Prokoviev, Ravel and Cortot) there has been such chemical rapport between composer and performer.

At least in my case, I have not heard about any other pianist able to sound so sarcastic, reverberating and genuinely Hungarian as Gyorgy Sandor did it.

So I really hope you to keep in mind all these previous considerations at the moment to make this wise choice. Go for this record without any shadow of doubt.

This album is now part of the mythic legend of the treasures for keyboard.

No other pianist will sound so astonishingly as Sandor does.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Authentic recording of Mikrokosmos, September 29, 2011

By 

Mark Merengue - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bela Bartok: Mikrokosmos (Audio CD)

My piano teacher used to have me play Mikrokosmos Volume 1 for sight-reading practice. Until recently, I did not know that these pieces got better and better as the volumes progress. Most of Volume 6 and some of Volumes 4 and 5 will probably be in my regular listening pool, now that I own this recording.

Now, this is the only recording I have heard of the complete Mikrokosmos, but it seems to me that Sandor gives very particular attention to detail in dynamics and expression. Sandor was also a contemporary of Bartok and an important proponent of his music, so I think his interpretations are quite credible.

As for sound quality, it is pretty good for 1955. There is a low level of hiss - not so much that it is uncomfortable to listen to, and there are only a handful of momentary artifacts that are readily noticeable. For comparison, the background hiss in Tureck's 1953 Well-Tempered Clavier on DG is much worse than that on this recording.