Béla Bartók
Complete Solo Piano Works

«His music is the noise produced by the author himself, while walking with boots on the piano keyboard.»
(an unwise musicologist speaking about Beléa Bartók)

For Béla Viktor János Bartók, one cannot deny, the piano played a central role in his musical research.
These 8 discs collect all the main works for solo piano by the great Hungarian composer (if he were born today he would be Romanian).
His studies began and focused on folk songs (especially Hungarian and Romanian), it should be emphasized that Bartók was a pioneer of ethnomusicology, thanks also to his friend and collaborator Zoltán Kodály, a refined scholar and expert on folk music.
Béla Bartók remains one of the leading exponents of 20th-century music, he is among the pioneers of twelve-tone music, but it is especially, as mentioned, by starting from folk music that he renewed the musical language.

But let's get to the music contained in this collection, I will limit myself to brief remarks on those I consider essential works for any true piano enthusiast but especially of music.
The first CD opens immediately with a fundamental work of the composer, namely the "14 Bagatelles" of 1908. What immediately catches the ear (even the more profane) is how the harmonic structures are freed in the sound space, moving away from the tonal system; to this result, Bartók arrived by studying the scales of Hungarian folk songs. There are references to Debussy but especially, and not just from the title, to the latest Beethoven for piano, both for the medium used (the keyboard) and for an intimate personal sound research. The fact that the episodes of the 14 bagatelles are rather short in duration and essential in their form makes it clear how the work distances itself from romanticism. The Bagatelles are some of the first compositions that show the future Bartók.
"Rhapsody Op.1" (1904) here in two versions (the long one about 18 minutes and the shorter one, about 10 minutes) would later be written also for orchestra. The work is referenced to Lizt, but it is the first important step towards the subsequent and innovative compositions of the Maestro.
The "2 Elegies" (1907-08) were not loved by the composer because he considered them too full of notes and of a romantic style. However, I cannot help but mention the second "Molto adagio, sempre rubato", expressive and painful, perhaps yes a bit emphatic, but it is stronger than me, I cannot help but like it.
Among the compositions not yet completely "in focus", where Bartók is still searching for the poetics that will ultimately distinguish him, we can include: "4 Pieces for Piano" (1903), "3 Burlesques" (1908), "7 Sketches" (1908), "2 Romanian Dances" (1909-10), "3 Folk Songs from the Csik District" (1910) and "4 Dirges" (1910).
Let us now come to a masterpiece like the "Allegro barbaro" of 1911, a composition of about 2 and a half minutes, perhaps his most well-known piano piece, but which at the time caused a scandal for its fury and expressive power, where the percussive progression on the keyboard creates a hammering and archaic rhythmic texture, a sort of fusion/collision between the modern era and the origins of mankind. A piece of truly impressive vital strength. For the record, I remember that "The Rite of Spring" by Stravinsky had not yet been definitively completed and the points of poetic contact between these two works are significant.
Another very interesting piece is "Suite (Op.14)" of 1916, with a folk flavor. Here all the studies done by the pianist on folk music have reached full maturity, now he not only appropriates and rereads popular themes, but he himself (re)invents them (another point of contact with Stravinsky, the "neoclassical" one). But let's talk about the use of the medium, the piano, in these four movements that compose the work, it is dissonant, dry, nervous, up to the "Sostenuto" (the last movement) slow and very intense, as if it were a meditative folding onto oneself.
The third CD contains the 4 books that compose the pedagogical work "For Children (on Hungarian and Slovak folk melodies)" of 1913 (here proposed in the 1943 revision). It is true that it is a study method to learn the piano (starting from simple pieces and progressively more difficult ones) but it is equally true that these simple structures enhance and help understand the piano and interpretive sensitivity of sound, elements so dear to the Maestro.
Also "Mikrokosmos" written between 1926 and 1939, is a work to learn modern piano, consisting of 153 pieces (including 6 with two pianos and 4 sung), always in order of increasing difficulty and divided into 6 books. The pieces are all very short (the average duration is 60 seconds). Anyway, one should not be fooled by the fact that this is a didactic work; here we are at the essence of Bartók's pianistic/compositional style. It is immediately evident how every single key, every single string that vibrates, that is, every single note is not only fundamental but is already a standalone microuniverse, are cells, musical worlds/modes that Bartók explores in all their expressiveness (like: counterpoints, chromatics, ostinatos, etc.). The sixth and last book closes with "6 Bulgarian Rhythm Dances" crowning a true masterpiece that is not only the portrait of a superlative musician but also a person of great humanity.
The "Piano Sonata" (1926) is another of the Master's peaks and a forerunner for a new pianistic conception. Here is all the mature Bartók: inspirations from folk music, simple but very varied structure and rhythm, percussive piano sound. This composition anticipates, by about a decade, another of his most well-known masterpieces, the "Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion Instruments".
Written almost simultaneously with the "Sonata", another masterful piece is "Out of Doors" (En plein air), a raging rhythmic explosion, alternating with a kind of lyrical minimalism, each vibration of the piano string interpenetrates and seems to relive in the next note. The fourth movement "The Night's Music" in its suspended, mysterious and bustling atmosphere is an unsurpassed lesson of 20th-century pianism and a new poetics inspired by nature, far from the sentimental emphasis of certain romanticism.
In the splendid "8 Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs (Op.20)" (1920) in reality, nothing is improvised. Bartók's (successful) intent is to develop a modern piano language starting from folk themes, but leaving them barely sketched, sketches on which to develop new harmonic and sound conceptions.
The beautiful "Dance Suite" of 1925, is a piano transcription from the homonymous orchestral work, an explosive and unapologetic pianism.
The box is completed with the following pieces:
"6 Romanian Folk Dances" (1915), "Sonatina" (1915), "3 Hungarian Folk Melodies" (1914), "Romanian Christmas Carols" (1915), "3 Etudes" (1919), "3 Rondos on Slovak Folk Melodies" (1917-27), "The First Contact with the Piano" (1913), "9 Short Pieces for Piano" (1926), "Little Suite" (1936), "15 Hungarian Peasant Songs" (1914), "10 Easy Pieces" (1909), "Funeral March for Kossuth" (1903, piano reduction from the symphonic poem).

To conclude the review, it is mandatory not only to mention but to praise the superlative work of immersion performed by a great pianist, namely Zoltán Kocsis, who succeeds very effectively in reaching the spirit and musical essence of Bartók.