Béla Bartók's Concerto for 2 pianos and percussion, performed by the WDR Symphony Orchestra with Lucas and Arthur Jussen, Peter Stracke (percussion) and Johannes Wippermann (percussion) under the baton of Cristian Măcelaru. Recorded live on 15.03.2024 in the Kölner Philharmonie.
Béla Bartók - Concerto for 2 pianos, percussion and orchestra
00:00:00 I. Assai lento - Allegro molto
00:12:40 II. Lento, ma non troppo
00:19:08 III. allegro non troppo
Lucas and Arthur Jussen, piano
Peter Stracke, percussion
Johannes Wippermann, percussion
WDR Symphony Orchestra
Cristian Măcelaru, conductor
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Introduction to the work
Budapest in 1938: piano student Georg Solti, who later became world-famous as a conductor, stands in at short notice for a concert at the State Opera: He has to turn over the sheet music for the evening's pianist.
the sheet music. She is at least as nervous as her page-turning assistant, as it is her first performance in this venerable house. Her name is Ditta Pásztory-Bartók. Like Solti, she studied piano with Béla Bartók and has been the wife of the famous composer for 15 years now. Now, at the State Opera, he is sitting right next to her at a second piano. They are presenting his Sonata for two pianos and percussion for the first time in Budapest. Georg Solti recalls: “I have never again experienced such an unsuccessful performance - after the work was over, almost the entire audience remained silent.” A particular disappointment for Bartók at his main venue, especially as the premiere had been enthusiastically acclaimed in Basel a few months earlier. The composition was commissioned by the billionaire patron Paul Sacher, who had made his fortune as head of the pharmaceutical company Hoffmann-La Roche.
as head of the pharmaceutical company Hoffmann-La Roche. After Bartók emigrated to the USA in 1940, he was delighted at his publisher's suggestion to rework the sonata as a concerto with orchestral accompaniment. The failure in Budapest was already happily forgotten. So he set to work, and on January 21, 1943, Bartók and his wife Ditta Pásztory played together again - this time the premiere of the orchestral version with the New York Philharmonic under Fritz Reiner.
For the Basel concert with the sonata version, Bartók had written an introduction in which he relates the solo instruments to each other: “The two percussion parts take on an equal role to the two piano parts.
equal to the two piano parts. The role of the percussion is varied: in many cases it is only a color nuance to the piano sound, in others it reinforces important accents, occasionally the percussion brings contrapuntal motifs against the piano parts, and often the timpani and xylophone in particular even play themes as the main voice.”
Text: Otto Hagedorn
5 июл 2024
