Hungarian Folk Tunes

arranged for violin and piano by Joseph Szigeti

Parlando - Andante non molto - Allegro vivace

Andante sostenuto - Allegro

Andante - Poco vivace

Although Bartók was not himself a violinist, he understood the instrument, as Yehudi Menuhin put it, “creatively.” That could explain not only why so many great violinists have been drawn to his violin music but also why some of them have found violin potential in music written for other instruments. In 1926, for example, Joseph Szigeti, made an arrangement of six of the forty-two Hungarian folksongs Bartók had included in the first two volumes of his piano pieces For Children in 1909. As fastidious as ever, though he was impressed by the violinist’s violin-and-piano transcriptions, he was not prepared to let them go as they were. It was he who suggested that the pieces should be presented in groups rather than as separate items and that a seventh piece, an Allegro that Szigeti hadn’t thought of arranging, should be linked with the Andante sostenuto to make a two-part second movement.

All the folksongs in For Children were collected by Bartók himself and, although the harmonies are his, the tunes are very genuine examples of peasant music. The opening piece in the first movement, called “The Peasant’s Flute” in For Children, is a an eloquent representative of the “parlando” category that Bartók found particularly moving. It leads directly into what is described in For Children as a “Soldier’s Song,” with characteristic reverse dotted rhythms in march time, and a “Swineherd’s Song” derived, to judge by the harmonics and other whistling sounds in the violin part, from some kind of pipe tune.

The Andante sostenuto is another “parlando” melody, enterprisingly harmonised in double stops on its reprise. Although the Allegro to which it is linked is presented in For Children as a “Study for the left hand” - which is presumably why Szigeti didn’t think of it in violin terms - it is effectively placed here, both as a contrast to the Andante sostenuto and as a little study in receding dynamics. In similar contrast, the Andante “Ballad” at the beginning of the third movement is followed by another quick dance, but with the emphasis the other way round to ensure an emphatic ending.