Bartók & Eötvös

It’s a fascinating journey which the great Hungarian conductor and composer Peter Eötvös embarks upon, together with the Gürzenich Orchestra. In a brilliant blend of Arabic and Spanish elements, his violin concerto »Alhambra« turns the famous Moorish castle in southern Andalusia into a musical monument. A sound artist and storyteller, Eötvös plays with colours and atmospheres and exploits a dynamic range from the barely audible all the way to majestic surges of the orchestra. The virtuosic solo part was composed for Isabelle Faust to whom the piece is dedicated.

Béla Bartók, too, was a skilled master of colours and nuances. The adventurous music ethnologist drew much inspiration from folk music he collected himself, as can be heard in his Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta from 1936, an homage to the rhythms of his native language and Hungarian folk music. And yet, always keen on experimenting, Bartók took a giant step towards the future with this piece: Though remaining traditional with regards to the classic form of the individual movements, he treats these in a very unusual and imaginative way, playing with the sounds that result from a split string section interacting with percussion and mysterious harp glissandi. He proves to be an expert in percussive rhythms and even sheds light upon the twelve-tone technique that was at the time just emerging.