Piano Sonata (1926)

The immediate stimulus of Bartok’s Sonata was comparatively prosaic: he needed a new work to take with him on a recital tour in 1926. But there is also a romantic side to it, in that the Sonata is one of several piano works written during a renewal of interest in the piano following the composer’s marriage to the young pianist, Ditta Pasztory, in 1923. There were problems in applying a non-classical style - based on the sound of central-Europan folk music - to a classical form. Piano technique, too, particularly the percussive element, had to be expanded to accommodate the style. So it is not surprising if, as Bartok said, the first movement “gave the audience a fright” when he gave the first performance of the Sonata. But, in contrast to the tough nut of the first subject, the second is almost playful, and there is a fascinating polyphonic development. The Sostenuto e pesante is lament which lays bare the soul of the piano, and the last movement refreshes it in an exhilharating folk-dance rondo.

The Piano Sonata begins where the Allegro barbaro left off and rises far above it. While the piano is again treated as a percussion instrument animated by a primitive rhythmic drive, in this work - written at much the same time as Out of Doors and the First Piano Concerto in 1926 - the characteristic sound is enriched by involvement with baroque-inspired polyphonic textures and is so resourcefully developed as to supply the material for a full-scale sonata structure. Of course, it would be a mistake to expect from the opening Allegro moderato anything like the expressive variety to be found in the equivalent movement of, say, Beethoven’s Op.111. When a structure is sustained by a persistent rhythm of repeated quavers in constantly changing meters there is little room for lyrical expansion.

Even so, from the three notes rising through a minor third in the opening bar Bartók generates an abundance of material, beginning with the main theme itself and its obstinate succession of irregularly stressed repeated notes. Obsessively intense though the situation remains as related themes are introduced, the texture does eventually open out enough to accommodate a comparatively radiant inspiration, a kind of bagpipe tune decorated by upward octave leaps on each note of the melodic line, and a melodious companion accompanied by downward arpeggios in the right hand. The development, which features a sforzando flourish rising through a tritone and repeated at ever decreasing intervals, seems to be cut short by its own impatience. The recapitulation has time to review only a few of the foregoing themes, the opening motif and the bagpipe tune prominent among them.

The slow movement offers no escape. From its emphatic opening on a theme consisting of no fewer than twenty repeated notes and just one change of pitch, it is as deliberate in its refusal to charm as the first movement is aggressive. Contrastingly melodious material is introduced but the counterpoint applied to it is harmonically so severe as to deny any lyrical appeal. The nerves of the piano are exposed here with a surgical precision all the more acute for the sarabande-like poise of the piece and its classically designed ternary structure.

The reassuringly folk-like character of the main theme of the last movement is offset by the correspondingly alienating effect of Bartók’s extensive use of chord clusters, which deliver a powerful percussive punch. They are not indiscriminately applied, however. Chord-cluster shock tactics are most effectively used to profile the rondo structure of the movement, one particularly dramatic gesture introducing both the first and last of the three episodes based on variants of the main theme. Unlike its variants, the rondo theme avoids contact with the clusters until, on its metrically simplified last appearance, it finds itself irresistibly propelled by their mechanical impulse towards the vivacissimo coda.

In 1911, in defiant response to a French critic who had referred to “barbarian young Hungarians” in a review of a concert he had given in Paris, Bartók wrote his Allegro barbaro – a work so extreme in its treatment of the piano as a percussion instrument that no one dared approach it until the composer himself gave the first performance in 1921. The Piano Sonata begins where the Allegro barbaro left off and rises far above it. While the piano is again treated as a percussion instrument animated by a primitive rhythmic drive, in this case the characteristic sound is enriched by involvement with baroque-inspired polyphonic textures and is so resourcefully developed as to supply the material for a full-scale sonata structure. Of course, it would be a mistake to expect from the opening Allegro moderato anything like the expressive variety to be found in the equivalent movement of, say, Schubert’s Sonata in A major. When a structure is sustained by a persistent rhythm of repeated quavers in constantly changing meters there is little room for lyrical expansion.

Even so, from the three notes rising from the bottom end of the keyboard in the opening bar Bartók generates an abundance of material, beginning with the main theme itself and its obstinate succession of irregularly stressed repeated notes. Obsessively intense though the situation remains as related themes are introduced, the texture does eventually open out enough to accommodate a comparatively radiant inspiration, a kind of bagpipe tune decorated by upward octave leaps on each note of the melodic line, and a melodious companion accompanied by downward arpeggios in the right hand. Although the development seems to be cut short by its own impatience, the recapitulation has time to review at least the opening motif and the bagpipe tune.

The slow movement offers no escape. From its emphatic opening on a theme consisting of no fewer than twenty repeated notes and just one change of pitch, it is as deliberate in its refusal to charm as the first movement is aggressive. Contrastingly melodious material is introduced but the counterpoint applied to it is harmonically so severe as to deny any lyrical appeal. The nerves of the piano are exposed here with a surgical precision all the more acute for the sarabande-like poise of the piece and its classically designed ternary structure.

The reassuringly folk-like character of the main theme of the last movement is offset by the correspondingly alienating effect of Bartók’s extensive use of chord clusters, which deliver a powerful percussive punch. They are not indiscriminately applied, however. Chord-cluster shock tactics are most effectively used to profile the rondo structure of the movement, not least the dramatic gesture that introduces both the first and last of the three episodes based on variants of the main theme. Unlike its variants, the rondo theme avoids contact with the clusters until, on its metrically simplified last appearance, it finds itself irresistibly propelled by their mechanical impulse towards the vivacissimo coda.