CD ECM Records Andras Keller, Janos Pilz - Bela Bartok: 44 Duos For Two Violins

2002

Andras Keller - vioara
Janos Pilz - vioara

Bela Bartok: 44 Duos For Two Violins

Bartók's 44 Duos, rich in folk melodies, are augmented by two pieces by Ligeti and Kurtág, in an all-Hungarian programme. Jewelled miniatures of 20th century music, performed by András Keller and János Pilz - violinists of Hungary's renowned Keller Quartet, and outstanding musicians steeped in the Bartókian tradition. These are beautiful, touching, dazzling performances. Bartók's '44 Duos for Violin' ­ like his Mikrokosmos for piano ­ are pieces that transcend their original pedagogic intention to stand by themselves as perfectly poised works. (Every violin student should own this album, but it is also music for a much wider public.) All but two of the duos are based on folk music, of many sources. Here, Hanns Eisler's judgement is relevant: 'Had Bartók written nothing but his arrangements of Romanian, Slovakian and Hungarian peasant songs and dances, he would nonetheless number among the great masters in the history of music. He is highly original and highly popular at the same time.'

Pick of the month, BBC Music Magazine
nmz tip, Neue Musikzeitung
CD of the year, Le Monde

Bartók's 44 Duos belong to a select rank of minor masterpieces for two violins that stretches from the duets of Spohr to the recent piece by Kurtág included here - a spectral chorale of exquisite beauty. Bartók wrote his highly inventive Duos - almost all of them arrangements of folksongs from various cultures - for a German violin pedagogue, grading them in order of technical difficulty. ... They were composed in the aftermath of his Fourth String Quartet, and there are echoes of that work's two scherzos in such pieces as the "Mosquito Dance", with its scurrying muted sounds, and in a number played pizzicato throughout. These performances, by two members of the Keller Quartet, are exemplary, hitting exactly the right tone of folk-like melancholy or exuberance (and sometimes both) for each piece. ... In addition to the Kurtág piece, Ligeti's Ballad and Dance, written in the same spirit as the Bartók, is a welcome bonus.
Misha Donat, BBC Music Magazine

Based entirely on folk song (Hungarian, Serbian, Rumanian, Ruthenian, Slovak and Transylvanian) the duos are performed here with unflinching vigour by Keller and Pilz. From the bare-fifth double-stopping opening of the "Transylvanian Song" to the hypnotic harmonics of the final "Serbian Dance", the outstanding vitality with which these wonderful miniatures are performed banishes all thoughts of mere studies to the back of the mind.
Tarik O'Regan, The Observer

Despite the extraordinary range of techniques and effects unleashed by Bartók elsewhere in his string writing - most notably in the Fourth String Quartet - the duos remain steadfastly true to their intentions as elementary teaching material. One might almost accuse Bartók of having gone too far, for even pizzicato is used surprisingly sparingly, with only the penultimate duo being for pizzicato alone. ... However, András Keller and János Pilz, both, incidentally, founder-members of the Keller Quartet, now offer the best of all possible worlds - tonal and technical sophistication, mesmerising interpretative insight and an intuitiveness so beguiling as to sweep the board in this repertoire. More than any other recording, Keller and Pilz swing the rhythms in an authentic folksong manner, so that one is barely aware of the music's didactic origins. Numbers like the Ruthenian Kolomejka, one of the duos most popular with students, sound for the world like a gipsy band at full pelt. Add to this typically unimpeachable ECM engineering, and you have a dream disc that goes straight onto my "best of year" shortlist.
Julian Haylock, The Strad

Forty-four pieces for two violins, written as a teaching aid, hardly sounds like a recipe for a thrilling CD. But these tiny pieces, most of which come in under two minutes, are pocket masterpieces. The sound is astonishingly warm and the music is beautifully played by the outstanding soloists András Keller and János Pilz. Also included are two excellent, but very different, pieces by the Hungarian composers György Ligeti and György Kurtág, "Ballade and Dance" and "Ligatura".
Ivan Hewett, The Times

Keller and Pilz are so evenly matched in character that they could be one player. Bartók's 44 duos from Central European and Arabian folk melodies spin by in a current of rhythms that range from the soft rocking of a lullaby, "Gyermekrengeteskor", to the pinch and poke of a "teasing song", "Parosito", and the stomp of the Rumanian "whirling dance", "Forgatos". For the attentive listener there's much to be marvelled at. For those who just want evocative "ethnic" atmosphere it works too.
Anna Picard, The Independent