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Sarah Plum violin timothy lovelace pianoBéla BartÓkWorks for Violin and piano Volume I

Béla BartÓk Works for Violin and piano volume 1Romanian Folk Dances (1925 – 26) (5:23)Transcription for violin and piano by Zoltán Székely of Romanian Folk Dances,BB 68 (1915) for solo piano123456I Joc cu bâtă (Stick Dance) (1:20)II Brâul (0:29)III Pe loc (In One Spot) Andante (1:04)IV Buciumeana (Dance of Bucium) (1:20)V Poargăromânească (Romanian Polka) (0:33)VI Măruntel (Fast Dance) (1:01)Rhapsody No. 1, BB 94a (1928, revised 1929)Dedicated to Joseph Szigeti78I “Lassù” Moderato (4.07)II “Friss” Allegro moderato (5.22)Sonata No. 2, for Violin and Piano BB 85 (1922)Written for Jelly d’Aranyi910I Molto moderato (8:50)II Allegretto (12:33)Rhapsody No. 2, BB 96a (1928, revised 1945)Dedicated to Zoltan Szekely1112I “Lassù” – Moderato (4.42)II “Friss” – Allegro moderato (6.28)Hungarian Folk Tunes (1926 – 27) (7:41)Transcription for violin and piano by Joseph Szigeti and the composer ofseven pieces from For Children, BB 53 (1908 – 10) for solo piano13I(4:12)BookII No. 28 ParlandoBook I No. 18 Andante non moltoBook II No. 42 Allegro vivace14II(2.05)BookII No. 33 Andante sostenutoBook I No. 6 Allegro15III(2:05)BookI No. 13 AndanteBook II No. 38 Poco vivaceProduced and engineered by Sergei Kvitko. Assistant audio engineer Vitaly Serebriakov.Recorded in June 2013 at Blue Griffin’s Studio The Ballroom. This cd was recorded with funding from Drake University.

Béla BartÓk Music for Violin and pianoBéla Bartók was born on March 25, 1881 in Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary (nowRomania). The oldest of two children, Bartók showed musical promise from a youngage, receiving his first piano lessons at age five and impressing his musically-inclinedparents with his ear for rhythm and precocious compositions, the earliest of thesedating from when he was nine years old. He entered the Academy of Music inBudapest in 1899, focusing on piano performance and composition. After completinghis studies at the Academy in 1903, Bartók freelanced as a pianist and composerthroughout Europe, and it was during this time he became more heavily invested inHungarian folk song. In 1904, Bartók traveled to northern Hungary, and it was here heoverheard a Transylvanian woman singing. This became an influential experience forBartók, who notated the woman’s song, and then wrote to his sister, saying that he“had a new plan: to collect the finest Hungarian folksongs and to raise them to thelevel of art-song.”His first ethnomusicological trips into rural Hungarian communities, occasionallyaccompanied by fellow Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály, began in 1906, withthe first published results of these trips coming out in 1907. He continued to avidlytranscribe and later record folksongs for many years, interrupted briefly by WorldWar I. Following the war, Bartók began integrating atonal techniques into his folkderived idiom, most noticeable in the First and Second Violin Sonatas from thisperiod (1921 and 1922, respectively). And yet it is this convergence that makesBartók’s music so difficult to pin down, as no one term accurately encapsulatesthe wide-ranging, even contradictory, aspects of his compositional style. Whilemuch of his earlier music draws on Romantic “gypsy” music in the style of Liszt orBrahms (significant ornamentation, rapid scalar passages, etc.), by the 1920s hehas begun to integrate modernist trends from western European composers, mostnotably Schoenberg and Stravinsky, as well as late Debussy. Even as he turns tocertain techniques of Schoenberg’s, such as avoiding octave doublings and noterepetitions within consecutive chords, he continues to draw heavily on the folk idiomshe encountered during his field work, including particular melodic configurations thatgive the perfect fourth primacy, and certain rural fiddling techniques which would nottranslate over to the piano. His indebtedness to folk material is also apparent in the twomovement lassú-friss form, typical of the verbunkos-style instrumental dance music of19th century Hungary. The meeting of these two impulses, that of a modernist musicallanguage freed from the strictures of western tonality and a commitment to folk-basedrhythmic and melodic structures, makes Bartók’s writing stand apart. While his pianoworks tend to be dominated by single-movement character pieces, his violin works allfall into the more “traditional” genres of the sonata, the concerto, and the rhapsody (the44 Duos standing as one of the major exceptions). The violin works were also writtenalmost exclusively for Bartók’s close friends, including Jelly d’Aranyi, Zoltán Székely,and Jósef Szigeti. In contrast to the piano works, which he generally wrote to performhimself, many of his violin works were “offerings” to his friends, rather than pieces thatwere explicitly commissioned by performers.The earliest of these “offerings” were the first two violin sonatas, both dedicatedto d’Aranyi. In the early 1920s, Bartók was deeply engrossed in his ethnographicwork, transcribing the hundreds of folk tunes he had collected with his partnerZoltán Kodály. He was also active on the concert circuit, travelling across Hungaryand Transylvania, and then to Britian, France, and Germany in 1922. Bartók hadknown d’Aranyi since she was a young girl studying at the Budapest Academy ofMusic, where he taught piano to her sister Hortense. Both Jelly and her sister begantouring Europe at a young age, where their musical skill as well as their sparkling

personalities made them immensely popular. While on vacation in Budapest in thefall of 1921, d’Aranyi paid a visit to Bartók, and the two played together for the firsttime since she had left for England in 1913. Bartók was so stunned by her playing,he immediately went to work on the first of the two sonatas. After touring Englandwith d’Aranyi (and several failed romantic overtures towards her), Bartók wrote anddedicated the second sonata to her. Their relations were sufficiently strained bythis point, however, that d’Aranyi refused to premiere the work, and Imre Waldbauerinstead gave the premiere in Berlin in February of 1923. Eventually they were ableto reconcile their differences, and in the spring of that year, d’Aranyi gave her firstperformance of the work.The melodic structure can be heard as based on the hora lunga, or the “longdrawn” song specific to Transylvanian instrumental music. The hora lunga arecompletely improvised, but typically have three main parts: a long, sustained phrasewith two opening notes; a flashy improvisatory section with significant embellishment;and a recitative-like portion centered on the final note. Bartók first encountered thisstyle during his ethnographic studies in 1913, and its influence can be heard in theirregular melodic structure and significant ornamentation of the Second Sonata.This sonata is often seen as one of Bartók’s most “modern” or “difficult” works, andrepresents his deep engagement with Schoenberg’s practices.The First and Second Violin Rhapsodies (1928) followed a period of renewedcomposition in which Bartók also wrote his Third and Fourth String Quartets. Theyrhapsodies were written for fellow Hungarian musicians Jósef Szigeti and ZoltánSzékely, perhaps as reciprocation for their arrangements of his own music, includingSzékely’s arrangement of the Romanian Folk Dances. He went on to create additionalarrangements of the rhapsodies, including one with violin and orchestra, and anotherof the first for cello and piano at the request of cellist Pablo Casals. The premiereof the first Rhapsody was given in Budapest in November of 1929 by its dedicatee,Szigeti, with the composer at the piano.Like the Second Sonata, both rhapsodies feature a traditional Hungarian bipartitestructure known as lassú-friss, or slow-fast. In these rhapsodies, Bartók interweavesvarious newly-composed melodies meant to closely resemble actual EasternEuropean melodies, particularly those from Hungarian, Romanian, and Ruthenianpeoples. However, unlike the Second Sonata, the first rhapsody is much more tonal.The Romanian Folk Dances (1925–6) and Hungarian Folk Tunes (1926–7)were both original piano works, later arranged for violin by Székely and Szigeti,respectively. Bartók performed these works in concerts with Székely and Szigeti in NewYork on 5– 6 February 1928, and the enthusiastic reception of these works seems tohave given Bartók the impetus to overcome his three-year-long “silent period,” and tobegin work on the First Rhapsody for violin. During one of Bartók’s tours in England,Szigeti saw an opportunity for joint recordings featuring the violinist-arrangers andBartók at the piano. Both the Romanian Folk Dances and the Hungarian Folk Tunes wererecorded at Columbia’s Abbey Road studios in January of 1930, and were well receivedfor their “odd flavor and neat build,” as a Gramophone review described them. This isone of the few professional recordings made of Bartók’s playing.Overall, these works show a general trend in Bartók’s composition, moving fromthe high modernist harmonic language of the early 1920s to the more folk-influenced,even Romantic tendencies of his later compositions. His strong interest in the folktraditions of his homeland, not only collecting and transcribing them but analyzingthem as well, combined with his interest in Western European art music, helped toproduce a tonal and structural language all his own. Jenna Harmon

Sarah Plum violinSarah Plum began her performing career by winning the first prize at the InternationalStulberg Competition in 1984. Since then she has carved out a distinctive role asa serious interpreter of a large range of music — commissioning many new worksas well as crafting fresh interpretations of the standard repertoire. Sarah hasbeen sought after by orchestras and fellow musicians in the US and Europe as asoloist, recitalist and chamber musician for concerts at venues and festivals suchas the Luzern Festival, Ars Musica Brussels, Cite de Musique and the Barbican. Herperformances have been praised as “consistently stunning with works that demandedconventional virtuosity but also great skill in unconventional techniques” (third coastjournal) and “extraordinary, meaningful and magnificent music” (Berlin Tageszeitung).As a new music specialist Plum has tirelessly championed composers —commissioning, premiering and discovering new works while also bringing themto the attention of a larger public. This has brought her acclaim at noted festivalsand venues such as Ankunft Neue Musik at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof, New York CityElectoacoustic Music Festival, 3rd Practice Festival, the Cube of the Moss Arts Centerat the Institute for Creativity and Technology at Virginia Tech, Sonic Landscapesat California State University Fullerton and Unruly Music at the Marcus Center(Milwaukee), among others. In the past three years alone she has commissionedpieces from Sidney Corbett, Christopher Adler, Charles Nichols, Eric Lyon, LaurieSchwartz, Mari Kimura, Sidney Boquiren, Mari Takano and Jeff Herriot.In addition Plum has been invited to participate in residencies at universitiessuch as UC Davis, Virginia Tech, UNC Greensboro, Montana State and San FranciscoState where she performs, gives master classes and workshops student compositions.Right: SarahPlum and Timothy Lovelace / Photo by Tom Foley