So on to our CD for today, a live recording of Chamber Music from the Saratoga, New York music festival. This EMI disc combines the music of three Hungarian-born composers, Franz Liszt, Bela Bartok, and Zoltan Kodaly. When I first saw the program, I admit I was a bit mystified--Bartok and Kodaly are so well known as twentieth century composers that the addition of the arch-romantic Liszt seemed bizarre. Bartok and Kodaly were children at the time of Liszt’s death, and the music for which they are most known is very stylistically different than his. But as I thought more about it, I remembered that Bartok’s earliest works are very Liszt-ian--there is a Bartok Elegy for piano that seems more like Liszt than Bartok. And the Kodaly Duo for violin and cello included on this disc is an early work, showing Kodaly’s interest in folk music, but still steeped in Romantic fervour. Let’s listen to a bit of that piece now, in a performance by Chantal Juillet and Truls Mark.

The pentatonic basis of much of this music is unmistakable; but like Liszt’s Hungarian dances and Bartok’s Romanian dances, this is not simply a transcription of folk music--far from it. All three composers absorbed the music of their homeland and brought it as an inspiration to the world of art music. It is this that most importantly links these three composers together. There are other similarities too--Liszt and Bartok were both fabulous pianists and all three became much more than just Hungarian composers--they became true citizens of the world. And all three were concerned with ideas of music education. Bartok and Kodaly are well known for their work in this field, Bartok for his Microkosmos compositions; Kodaly for his teaching method; and Liszt spent a significant portion of his latter years teaching piano. Recognizing these kinds of relationships and helping the audience to think in new ways about the music involved is a true sign of great programming.

And yet, there is contrast on this disc, quite literally. The Bartok work included is his three-movement suite for violin, clarinet and piano called Contrasts, which he wrote for himself, a violinist friend Josef Szigeti, and the American jazz clarinettist Benny Goodman. Like the Kodaly piece, this hints at developments later in Bartok’s career; for example, the chorale writing in the second movement and the swirling texture of scales in close imitation in the third. Both these ideas are developed much further in Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra. For now, here’s a bit of the end of the entire piece, performed by Chantal Juillet, Michael Collins on clarinet, and Martha Argerich on piano.

One wonders what Benny Goodman made of this. He also commissioned Stravinsky to write the Ebony Concerto for Clarinet and Jazz Band--and neither of these pieces are really the composer's best work. The Bartok, as enjoyable as it is, and certainly it is played fantastically and energetically, has small ambitions. I rather think that Goodman was hoping for something more like Rhapsody in Blue.

The Liszt Concerto Pathetique is something else altogether. While the Bartok has small ambitions, this piece aims high. So high, in fact, that it exists in four different versions--one for solo piano, the one presented here for two pianos, and two arrangements for piano and orchestra; all prepared by Liszt himself. This is the Liszt we know and love, a forward-looking composer unafraid to engage in bombast and pathos when necessary--but so thrilling and emotional for just that reason. Let’s end here, with the beginning of Liszt’s Concerto Pathetique played by Martha Argerich and Nelson Freire.

* Samuel Wong is the conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.