Bartok in Aberystwyth

Abstract

IN 1922 Bartók visited Britain to take part in concerts in London, Aberystwyth, and Liverpool. He was encouraged by Jelli and Adila d’Aranyi, who had been his piano pupils in Budapest, and were by that time internationally famous violinists living in London. Jelli had commissioned his first violin sonata, and she and the composer gave its première on 14 March at the home of the Hungarian Chargé d’Affaires. On 16 March ‘M. BELA BARTOK (from Buda-pesth)’—as the programme put it—played at the seventy-seventh of the University College of Wales’s weekly concerts, on the invitation of Walford Davies, the Professor of Music and a friend of the d’Aranyis. These concerts were then taking place in the Parish Hall, and funded partly by members of the local Music Club, although students were admitted free. Bartók played two groups of his piano pieces, and joined two of the college’s professional musicians, Hubert Davies (violin) and Arthur Williams (cello) in Beethoven’s Trio in E flat, Op. 70 (‘The Archduke’). The first group of piano pieces consisted of a Hungarian Peasant Dance, the Burlesque ‘Un Peu Gris’ (also known as ‘A Bit Drunk’), ‘Evening in the Country’, ‘Bear Dance’, and the ‘Allegro Barbaro’. The second group consisted of a Romanian Peasant Dance, a Dirge, the Suite, Op. 14, and another Romanian Dance. Walford Davies introduced the composer with all his usual aplomb, and was reported by The Welsh Gazette as saying his music was admittedly strange, but had ‘a strangeness so articulate that it could have puzzled none of them’. However, to his colleague Charles Clements he commented ‘Baffling, isn’t it?’ Clements, himself a good pianist, turned the pages for Bartók in the Beethoven, and expressed admiration for his playing. The Cambrian News commented that the famous pianist and composer’s performance: was a masterpiece of technique which gripped the attention of the vast audience. Thought faintly reminiscent of Liszt, the music was stamped by a rugged individuality which displayed a domination by the overmastering compulsion of a powerful personality. It made the strongest appeal to the intellect and though the meaning—and message—was somewhat obscured to the uninitiated, it gave a glimpse of hitherto undreamt of possibilities.