Bartók’s voluminous output for the piano contains a great many exquisite masterpieces at every level of difficulty. This collection gathers together easy to moderately difficult pieces including a wide variety of dance forms and folk-music miniatures. Players can coax magical sounds from the instrument using a varied refinement of touch such as silently depressed keys or can even play in two keys at once (bitonality). In addition all of this provides a stimulus for improvisation.This collection is a welcome addition to the repertoire used in music schools and private lessons and will of course appeal to all lovers of Bartók’s music. Besides familiar works italso contains several that have never before been edited. Two pieces handed down as fragments have been judiciously completed by the editor. Care has been taken to provide a spacious engraving and practical page turns.Easy to moderately difficult pieces with fingeringIdeal for teaching purposesSeveral pieces edited for the first timeSpacious engraving with practical page turns
SKU: BT.EMBZ300
English-German-Hungarian.
'The Ten Easy Pieces - with a 'Dedication' as an eleventh - are a complement to the Bagatelles. The former were written with pedagogical purposes, that is, to supply piano students with easy contemporary pieces' wrote Bartók in the foreword to a planned American edition. This was his first piano series to be published with detailed fingering and pedalling indications, as he had done with the works of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart etc. in what are known as his performing editions of classical piano music.' (HCD 32525 Bartók New Series Vol. 25, László Somfai).
SKU: BT.EMBZ8318
An Evening in the Village was composed in 1908 as no. 5 of the Ten Easy Piano Pieces. It has become one of Bartók's favorite works, which the composer himself was fond of playing at recitals. As he explained in an American interview, it was ''an original composition that is ... with themes of my own invention but ... the themes are in the style of the Hungarian-Transylvanian folk tunes. There are two themes. The first one is a parlando-rubato-rhythm and the second one is more in a dance-like rhythm. The second one is more or less the imitation of a peasant flute playing.'' Bartók also orchestrated the piece in 1931 as no. 1 of Hungarian Sketches. In 2015 we are launching aseries entitled Bartók Transcriptions for Music Students to mark the 70th anniversary of the composer s death. This involves reissuing our tried publications, and publishing some further, new transcriptions that fulfill in every respect the strict aesthetic demands of the earlier ones. We trust these publications will allow us to introduce still more music students to the realm of one of the great geniuses of 20th-century music. Das 1908 als Nr. 5 der Zehn leichten Klavierstücke komponierte Klavierwerk Ein Abend am Lande ist ein echter Bartók-Schlager, der auch vom Komponisten selbst mit Vorliebe im Rahmen seiner Konzerte vorgetragen wurde. In einem amerikanischen Interview äußerte er sich dazu, ''… es handelt sich um eine Originalkomposition, das heißt, ihre Themen stammen von mir, wobei diese Themen jedoch den Stil der siebenbürgisch-ungarischen Volkslieder aufgreifen. Von seinen zwei Themen hat das erste Parlando-Rubato-Charakter, das zweite ist eher von einem Tanzrhythmus geprägt … und ist mehr oder weniger die Imitation eines bäuerlichen Blockflötenspiels.'' Im Jahr 1931 instrumentierte Bartókdas Stück als Nr. 1 der Bilder aus Ungarn auch für Orchester.
SKU: BT.EMBZ989
English-German.
This volume consisting of 18 pieces contains works composed by Bartók for the Piano Tutor he edited together with Sándor Reschofsky and published in 1913. These little pieces by Bartók were enthusiastically hailed by the critic Antal Molnár in the columns of Nyugat: 'We see that even a piece intended for beginners can be of flesh and blood, can have a living soul and a thinking brain. No more wooden-puppet piano literature, for it can also be like this. These pieces are not only playable with real feeling but are so delightful that they educate, they inculcate aristocratic simplicity and noble naivety, and command respect for timeless, true musicality.' (November 1, 1913.) Theseminiature pieces include folk song arrangements and also original compositions anticipating the style of Mikrokosmos. (Hungaroton HCD 31604) Die 18 kleinen, leichten Klavierstücke stammen aus der Klavierschule von Bartók-Reschofsky von 1913 und sind nicht nur überaus geeignete Übungen für Anfänger sondern kleine Meisterwerke von überaus elegantem und zeitlosem Charme.
