Canadian violinist James Ehnes, one of the more saleable soloists in classical music at the moment, gets top billing on this collection of little Bartók works. But only in the little Sonatina, BB 102a, a transcription of a piano work, is he really featured; in the other works he's an equal partner in an ensemble. The oddity here is the collection of 44 Duos, BB 104, which Bartók wrote as a collection of student pieces in 1931. Bartók probably did not intend them as a single work, which makes the rather lofty motives imputed ...
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Canadian violinist James Ehnes, one of the more saleable soloists in classical music at the moment, gets top billing on this collection of little Bartók works. But only in the little Sonatina, BB 102a, a transcription of a piano work, is he really featured; in the other works he's an equal partner in an ensemble. The oddity here is the collection of 44 Duos, BB 104, which Bartók wrote as a collection of student pieces in 1931. Bartók probably did not intend them as a single work, which makes the rather lofty motives imputed to them by annotator Paul Griffiths (he even suggests that the multi-ethnic character of the music, a Bartók characteristic since the beginning, might have been a warning against rising fascism), a bit unlikely. They are of a piece with Bartók's other major pedagogical work, the Mikrokosmos for piano, and the set of 44 has no real overall shape; hearing them all together is a bit much. That said, they're consistently interesting, each exploring a certain scale or folk rhythm, and...
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Add this copy of Chamber Works for Violin Vol 3 to cart. $35.67, new condition, Sold by newtownvideo rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from huntingdon valley, PA, UNITED STATES, published 2014 by Chandos.
