Rhapsody for viola

Rhapsody

Tibor Serly is best remembered for his completion of Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto, which was all but finished when the composer died in 1945, and his rather more controversial reconstruction of the Viola Concerto, which Bartók had left in a sadly chaotic state when had he diverted his attention to the Piano Concerto. By this time Serly had been an American citizen for nearly 30 years but he was born in Hungary (where his father had been a pupil of Liszt) and had returned there in 1922 to study composition with Kodály and violin with Hubay at the Budapest Royal Academy. That is when he first met Bartók, whom he took under his protection when Hungary’s leading composer arrived as an exile in New York in 1940.

So, although he had a sound and musical theories very much of his own, it is scarcely surprising that his viola Rhapsody, which was written when he was working on the Bartök Viola Concerto, owes more than a little to Hungarian folk song in general and Barók in particular. In fact, just about all the tunes that appear in pleasingly quick succession ­– after an introduction and cadenza that promise something much more serious – had been used by Bartók in his children’s pieces. It is also not surprising that a viola expert like Serly, who had written a Viola Concerto in the ‘30s, should have presented them so attractively.