Unaccompanied Partsongs, Duos, Trios Three Village Scenes
Bela Bartók’s instrumental music is well known in the United Kingdom but not so his choral works and in particular, the 27 unaccompanied part-songs for equal voices, which we should regard as precious miniatures. The Bartók part-songs show an accomplished technique of vocal polyphony, thus the choirs brought up on renaissance and baroque music, including the works of the English Madrigal School, will have the technical resources to approach the 20th Century madrigals of Bartok. The folk music of Eastern Europe always gave great inspiration to Bartok, hence the powerful rhythmic quality in many of his compositions. The Part-songs, through their words chosen by the composer and through the ways he sets them to music reveal a great deal about Bartók’s inner life. He was a very reserved person, hardly approachable even by his closest friends but his soul was open and ever will be for the interpreters who approach him through his music. The texts of the part-songs are selected from folk poetry but modified by the composer. This is a rare re-issue of a cd, originaly recorded in 1981 to commemorate Bartok's centerary.
