Valeria Szervanszky - Bartok: Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion

Béla Bartók: Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion (1937) 1. Assai lento - Allegro molto 2. Lento, ma non troppo 3. Allegro non troppo Valeria Szervánszky & Ronald Cavaye - pianos Zoltán Rácz & Aurél Holló - percussion In the early 1980s, while she was touring in Japan, I took the Hungarian pianist Annie Fischer to see Kabuki. During the interval at the Kabuki-za in Tokyo we discussed Bartók's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion and she told me that one afternoon in the autumn of 1937 she and her husband, the musicologist Aladár Tóth, received an invitation from Bartók. He told them that he had just finished a new piece and that he and his wife, Ditta Pásztory, would like to play it for them. That day, in Bartók's home, they heard - without the percussion - the first ever performance of this piece. The real premiere did not take place until 16th January 1938 in Basel, Switzerland at a concert for the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM), with Bartók and Ditta Pásztory (pianos) and Fritz Schiesser and Philipp Rühlig (percussion). The true nature of the piano as a percussion instrument had been explored much earlier by, for example, the American composer Henry Cowell (1897-1965), and Bartók himself highlighted the connection between the piano and percussion by grouping the orchestral percussion around the solo piano in his Piano Concerto No. 1 (1926). However, this composition is certainly the greatest celebration of the contrasting and complementary tone-colours of the piano and traditional percussion instruments. Karlheinz Stockhausen even considered the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion important enough to make it the subject of his doctoral thesis. In his highly detailed study The Workshop of Bartók and Kodály (English edition, Editio Musica Budapest, 1983) the Hungarian musicologist Ernö Lendvai points out that, although Bartók was criticised during the early twentieth century for his indifference to the more overtly avant-garde serial compositional techniques of Schönberg and Webern, the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion is the most significant demonstration of Bartók's application of the Golden Section as a different, but nonetheless compelling, compositional technique by which all of the musical elements could be integrated. The Golden Section is the relationship between the greater part of an object to the lesser (mathematically expressed as 0.618 to 1.00) and there are numerous examples of this phenomenon to be found both in nature (in the arrangement of branches along the stems of plants and of veins in leaves, for example) and in architecture and the visual arts. This single basic principal of the Golden Section influences not only this piece's rhythm, melody, harmony, tonal order, dynamics, colour and choice of registers, but also the structure of both individual movements and the composition as a whole. The first movement, for example, consists of 443 bars. 443×0.618 = 273.774 or 274 to the nearest whole number. Extraordinarily, bar 274 is the recapitulation of this sonata-form movement. Likewise, the entire sonata consists of 6,432 eighth notes. Multiplying this number by 0.618 gives a Golden Section at exactly the start of the second movement. It is, however, the juxtaposition of the tone-colours of the percussion and the pianos which provide the unique qualities of this composition. Melodic interest is centred (as one might expect) principally upon the pianos and the xylophone, although the tunings of the timpani are also employed to considerable effect, adding bass notes to piano harmonies and, most noticeably, eerie sliding glissandi. The other percussion instruments - triangle, tam-tam, cymbals and side-drum - provide rhythmical interjections as well as contrasting and supplementary colouring to the two pianos. The non-melodic percussion instruments are, however, given a prominent role at the beginning of the second movement (the Golden Section of the entire sonata) where the varying tone-colours are almost melodic in themselves and are complemented rather than contrasted by the entry of the first piano melody. The Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion begins in the swirling darkness of Dante's Inferno with a stygian F#. It ends in a joyful radiance of C major (the key of the fifth door of Duke Bluebeard's Castle), carried along on a sparkling side-drum and cymbal rhythm. Maurice Ravel's La valse - poéme chorégraphique (1919-20) (Arrangement for two pianos by the composer) In the preface to the score of La valse Ravel wrote the following: 'Gaps in the swirling clouds reveal waltzing couples. As the clouds gradually clear an immense hall (at letter A in the score) is revealed, with a mass of whirling dancers. The image continues to clear and (letter B) the brilliant light of the chandeliers shines down - an imperial court, about 1855." Despite this somewhat poetic image, La valse has a darker, at times frenetic side which possibly came about as a result of the changes in the composer's thought processes during it's long gestation. Ravel's idea of an orchestral composition based on the Viennese waltz, and the waltzes of Johann Strauss II in particular, stems from as early as 1906, and he originally considered entitling this work Wien ("Vienna"). Whether or not Ravel's experiences as a driver during the First World War gave rise to his decision to abandon the overtly Germanic title for the more general La valse is open to debate. However, it was a commission from Sergei Diaghilev for a new ballet for the Ballets Russes which led to the piece's completion, although Diaghilev rejected the work, causing a split between the two men. Although subsequently staged as a ballet, notably by Ida Rubinstein and George Balanchine, it is as a concert work that La valse is best known. Apart from the original orchestral version, La valse is particularly treasured by pianists and exists in several versions. Ravel himself made arrangements of La valse for both solo piano and two pianos (included on this CD) and there is another version for piano duet by Lucien Garban. Glenn Gould also recorded his own transcription for piano solo (unpublished) and Zoltán Kocsis has made another transcription for two pianos. Ronald Cavaye, London, 2012 Valeria Szervánszky & Ronald Cavaye have been performing as a piano duo since 1979. They have played extensively in Europe and the Far East - particularly in Japan where they lived for many years. They perform a large repertoire with special emphasis on works of the twentieth century such as Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring and Concerto for Two Solo Pianos and Bartók's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. Szervánszky and Cavaye have recorded the Mozart concertos for two and three pianos, Stravinsky's own arrangement of The Rite of Spring for piano duet, together with works by Ravel and Debussy, the first complete CD recording of the first four volumes of Játékok - Games by the Hungarian composer, György Kurtág, and in 2012, Bartók's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion and Ravel's La valse for the Hungarian record company, Hugaronton. During the 1994 International Bartók Festival they also gave the Hungarian première of Kurtág's Lebenslauf for two pianos and two basset horns and have since performed the work in Budapest and London (with members of the London Sinfonietta). They have broadcast for the BBC and Hungarian Radio and perform regularly in Europe, the USA and in Japan.