Diverse Miniatures Bartók duos for two violins - heard by HOWARD SMITH '... impressive credentials ...'

These diverse miniatures are light years apart from études of nineteenth century middle European composers, for Béla Bartók assimilated songs of Hungarian peasantry -- the outcome of assiduous fieldwork (1908/09) -- into his distinctive, singular idiom. Bartók and Kodály found the old Magyar folk melodies were based on pentatonic scales, like those in folk traditions of Central Asia and Siberia.

The bulk of the themes are aggregated from 'peasant' tunes Bartók discovered in the Hungarian countryside, and they have no equivalent in the body of western European composition.

The Icelandic artists in MSR's new recording certainly take convincingly to the Hungarian folk idioms that inform all forty-four of Bartók's unparalleled duos...

BELA BARTOK

VIOLIN MUSIC

MSR CLASSICS