Performance Practice and Philology in Barték’s Violin Concerto (1938) Péter Lai Bard College PO Box 5000, NY 12504-5000 Annandale-on-Hudsos, USA Ermail:lakipeter@aol.com (Received: September 201 1; accepted: August 2012) Abstract: The world premiere recording of Barték’s Violin Concerto, played by Zoltin Székely has been a classic for seventy-two years now. Since that time, dozens of artists have committed the work to disc and hundreds more—from concert artists to conservatory students —have played the Concerto, Székely’s extremely subile, almost chamber-music-like interpretation has been widely admired but many violin- ists in past decades have favored, by and large, a more robust approach, one that stress- es the work's connections to the Romantic concerto tradition. The question is: can a careful reading of the musical text—the final version as well as the various manu- script sources-—help a player make practical stylistic decisions? A comparative exam- ination of the performance of the first 16 measures from a number of older and more recent recordings will be set against what textual analysis can tell us, as atest case for a productive dialog between scholarship and performance. Keywords: Bartok, Violin Concerto, interpretation analysis, Zoltan Székely, Yehudi Menuhin, Barnabés Kelemen Inan earlier paper,’ I investigated how the performance tradition of Bartok’s 1938 Violin Concerto had evolved since the world premiere performance by Zoltén Székely. Obviously, even though many of us may view Székely’s performance as the ultimate reading of the work, life does not stand still, and new generations of violinists inevitably bring their own traditions, their own backgrounds, their own musical tastes to bear on the work. One must welcome the resulting diversity as the work enters its “afterlife” where it is really out of the hands of the composer. 1. “Some Impressions on the Performances Tracition of the Barték Violin Concerto,” in Essays in Honor of Léselé Somfai on His 70th Birthday: Studies inthe Sources and the Interpretation of Music, ed, Laszl6 Vikiiius and Vera Lampert (Lanham, Maryland: The Searecrow Press, 2005), 461-468, Studia Museologiea $3/1-3, 2012, pp. 183-160 ‘DOL: 10.1356SMus33.2012.1-3.11 788-6244r$ 20.00 © 2012 Akadémiai KiadS, BudapestIsa Péter Laki With the Székely-Mengelberg recording, we have the sort of document we wish we had for, say, the Brahms Concerto as played by Joachim. Yet it is sober- ing to think that, at the end of the day, the existence of such a wonderful docu- ment only goes so far in helping a latter-day performer—precisely because, as I said, each artist must bring his or her own personality, his or her own unique background to the work. As I pointed out in my earlier paper, Székely was a com- poser in his own right; as a performer he was primarily a recitalist and, for many years, a celebrated quartet leader, but he was not known for touring extensively with the Beethoven, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky concertos. That sounds nothing like the profile of most violinists who took on the Barték Concerto aficr Székely had withdrawn from performing it regularly (his reprise of the work in Budapest in 1977 was an unforgettable, but unfortunately isolated event). Therefore the question arises: if you are a star violinist planning to include the Bartok Concerto in your active repertoire, on what basis are you going to define your own approach to the work? Studying the score and ail of its available sources, including manuscript ones, is a good start. But, as we shall sce, such study is apt to complicate the issues even further. ‘As we all know, there has been preserved a solo violin part of the first move- ment in Barték’s hand, bearing the tempo marking Tempo di Verbunkos. This marking, although not retained in the final draft or the printed edition, is extremely important, not only because it makes explicit a vernacular connection that unquestionably informs the music, but above all because it offers further evi- dence of Barték’s “reconciliation” with a particular style of traditional music that he was profoundly steeped in as a young man but later repudiated, after discov- ering the ancient layers of peasant music. The first signs of that reconciliation could be found in the two violin rhapsodies of 1928, written after Bartok had rec- ognized the roots of the verbunkos, a style cultivated by professional musicians and influenced by Western classical music, in the Transylvanian peasant tradition itself, a discovery that, in a way, “legitimized” the verbunkos in his eyes. The influence of the verburnkos may then be found in several of his later works, most prominently in the trio Contrasis. As David Schneider has convincingly shown,? verbunkos-derived elements may be found in several features of the orchestration of the Violin Concerto. In the solo part, Schneider traces what he calls the “hic- cupped” or “interrupted pickup” to the verbunkos, and other features of the open- ing theme may well further reinforce the link. Yet it is far from clear what con- clusions a performer should draw from Bartok’s designation of the concerto movement as Tempo di Verbunkos. The verbunkos is essentially a dance form, which the first movement of the Concerto is clearly not. Székely certainly didn’t 2. David E. Schneider, Bariék, Hungary, and the Renewal of Tedition: Case Studies in the Intersection of Modernity and Nationality (Betkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006), 239. Studia Muscolegica 83, 2012Performance Practice and Philology in Barték’s Violin Concerto (1938) 155 play it as a dance, and it can be dangerous to exaggerate the verbunkos character as some performers have occasionally done. Even if we allow that Tempo di Verbunkos does not necessarily imply the actu- al verbunkos but only its tempo and, in any case, the marking was omitted in the published version, it is still far from clear how the marking should be translated into actual musical performance. The character of the Violin Concerto’s opening theme is established by the duality of a smooth cantabile line and the angular rhythms that keep propelling that line in new directions. The melody contains elements that strive for equilib- rium— its tonal unity, its transparent melodic structure, modeled on a Hungarian folksong of the new style, the clear logic of its harmonic progressions, and the gradual and well-balanced rise and fall of the melodic contour. The persistent syncopations in the melody strive to ever so gently disrupt that equilibrium, fore- ing the performer to choose which aspect of the melody to emphasize: the long line or the angularities. This decision will have far-reaching consequences as to any given soloist’s portrayal of the theme’s character. Zoltin Székely, clearly, preferred the long line. His interpretation captivates the listener by its eminent singing quality. Nothing is allowed to break up the unity of the entire sixteen-bar phrase; this is particularly evident in mm. 13-16 where he keeps the music going without articulating every single measure or even half-measure separately as other violinists have sometimes done since, and he keeps the poco in the poco allargando of m. 15, a slowing-down that, in other performances, is frequently exaggerated. Contrast this with an early rendition by another violinist who knew Bartok and received the dedication of a work from him and counted as a major champion of Bartok’s music in the years immediately following the composer's death—even though, admittedly, he did not know Bartdk for so many years or enjoy the same closeness with him that Székely did. Yehudi Menuhin recorded the Barték Concerto no fewer than four times—first with Wilhelm Furtwangler. In the Menuhin-Furtwangler recording made in 1953, practically every note of the main theme receives a huge accent, the tone is somewhat forced, and the overall character of the rendition, if one has to describe it in one word, would be “hero- ic” rather than “lyrical.” Both violinists read the same score, yet they came to dia metrically opposite conclusions as to its interpretation. Menuhin may not have played the Violin Concerto for Bartok, but he did play the First Sonata for Violin and Piano for him, eliciting the following famous com- ment from the composer: “I did not think music could be played like that until long after the composer was dead.’> What Bart6k probably meant by this was something along the lines of: “You play my music as though it were by a com- poser from an earlier era that had been around long enough to be completely 3. Yehudi Menuhin, Unfinished Journey (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977), 164 Studia Musicoiogica 53,2012156 Péter Laki assimilated.” But what the comment, perhaps unwittingly, also does, is downplay the benefits of working with a living composer. If you can play a dead compos- er better than you can a living one, that means that reading the score can give you all the information you really need, and you don’t necessarily have to rely on per- sonal communications with the composer to “get it right.” Therefore, the fact that Székely rehearsed the Concerto with Bartok does not automatically mean that he was in the possession of any privileged information from the source that other violinists necessarily, and irredeemably, lacked. Székely recounted his rehearsals with Barték in great detail,* disclosing a great deal of information about crucial matters like Székely’s suggestion that Bartok extend the ending of the first move- ment. Yet he says little about matters of performing style being addressed at all, noting only that “[Bartok] was very pleased” with Székely’s interpretation, “and we had not much trouble with it.” His way of playing the Concerto, then, may have more to do with his own artistic temperament, musical background, and per- sonal taste, than with any specific instructions received from the composer. That being said, it is safe to guess that the aforementioned “angularities” of the many cighth-note/quarter-note/cighth-note syncopations, or the “interrupted pickups,” would be perfectly natural, or to borrow a term from musical semiotics, unmarked, to a Hungarian player; but they would seem out of the ordinary, ‘marked, to someone from outside that tradition, and one would consequently be inclined to give those features, perceived as marked, greater prominence in one’s performances. And that includes Menuhin, who remained one of the principal international exponents of the Concerto for many years. He recorded it three more times over the years, cach time with Antal Dorati, whose own connections to the composer need not be rehearsed here. In the recordings made with Dorati, Menuhin’s interpretation of the opening theme is considerably “mellower” than ‘on the Furtwangler recording. Particularly striking is the difference in the open- ing pickup of two sixteenth-notes—which, as we know, were an afterthought on Bartdk’s part. On the Furtwangler recording, Menuhin leaned on those sixteenth- notes with great force; he played them much more gently in later years. ‘Yet there was one artistic decision that never changed; it was onc, morcover, that ran directly counter to the score: Menuhin ignored the slur that ties together the two sixteenth-notes and played them consistently with separate bows. It is a tiny detail, yet it is not without major consequences: legato playing highlights the longer phrase, non-legato gives more weight to the individual note. The slur between the first two notes was not the only one consistently ignored: the same goes for those in mm. 14, 15, and 17 (Plate 1). On the 1957 recording (though not in 1965), the verbunkos cadence in m. 10 is given additional emphasis by an inserted rest, and the tone is definitely on the “fat” side. 4, See Claude Kenneson,Scékelyand Bart6k: The Story ofa Friendship (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Pres, 1994), 204-205 Shudia Muscologica 83, 2012Performance Practiee and Philology’ ie Bartok's Violie Concerta (1938) 1ST Peate | Valin Concerto, beginning of the first movement, solo violin part ———— No maiter how precise Baridk’s notation is, it inevitably leaves certain param= ters undetermined, and those are precisely the parameters that distinguish between the “heroic” and the “lyrical” style; in other words, the parameters that express the musical taste on the basis of which one can differentiate between Székely’s performance and subsequent readings, Regarding the tempo, Székely's ‘recording of the first movement takes less time than any other recording: sim- plicity and the absence of character exaggeration in this case spell temporal econ- omy as well, Dynamics, which is an important differentiating factor among the various recordings, can never be captured precisely in notation, The score has a single dynamic marking, forte, for the first 16 bars, followed by a crescendo into pit forte. Should onc take the forte literally, or would one rather take it down a notch to leave room for the piit forte? Composer's bowings, as we have seen, can be ignored with impunity. Fingerings are, with a few rare exceptions, not included in the score at all and are left to the discretion of the performer, yet fingerings have important consequences for the interpretation. Some violinists play bars 1-4 of the theme entirely on the G string, resulting in a thicker, more robust sound, and definitely affecting the character of the music, Some violinists shift with audible slides, athers do not. Another unnotated aspect af the music is fempo rubato, Different artists use different degrees of rubato at different paints of the theme: is that consistent with the verbwekas connection, and if so, how much rubato is appropriate and exact- ly where? All of these aspects must obviously be decided by the performer. Seta Anuseabgicn 52.202158 Péter Laki In the violin part in Bartok’s hand that bears the marking “Tempo di Verbunkos,” the fourth note of m. 12, BF in the definitive score, is spelled as a C4. Why did Barték make that change and what are its consequences, if any, for performance? In my opinion, while the change was made primarily for harmonic Teasons, it may suggest a different fingering and, even more importantly, draws extra attention to that note, inviting a slight agogic accent; with a C4, the last three eighth-notes of the measure would be simply an A-minor triad, and the middle note would not receive the special attention it requires now. ‘One of the most recent recordings of the Concerto is that made by Bamabis Kelemen and the Hungarian National Philharmonic under Zoltén Kocsis in 2010 as part of Hungaroton’s Bartok New Series. What I hear in this rendition is a cre- ative synthesis of the “lyrical” and “heroic” approaches, with some remarkable original thoughts on the work that, even at first hearing, distinguish it from all previous readings. The use of rubato is more extensive than elsewhere, serving to highlight many subtle nuances in the opening theme; it is especially noticeable in the sequential measures 15-18, where Kelemen, instead of building to a climax like most other performers do, simply continues “singing,” never losing sight of the fact that these measures are simply the third line of the imaginary new-style Hungarian folksong on which the theme was modeled. There is something interesting that has to be pointed out about this sequential passage, however. For in addition to being modeled on a new-style Hungarian folksong, the fact that a longer phrase is followed by a shorter one which is repeated sequentially, also harks back to Baroque practice, the measures in ques- tion also functioning like the Fortspinnung section in Bach’s C-minor concerto for two harpsichords, BWV 1060. Structurally, the ritornello theme in this con- certo is rather similar to the opening theme of the Bartok Violin Concerto: A — Ay — BI/B2 — closing. In both cases, the second line repeats the first at an inter- fifth higher in the Bart6k, a second lower in the Bach), and the third line ivided into two halves, the second of which repeats the first in a lower range (admittedly, in the Bartok, the repetition is not exact). Years ago, Laszlé Somfai observed in private conversation the fact that pen- tatonicism is found both in Hungarian peasant music and in the music of Debussy was proof to Bartdk that he was on the right track. Analogously, this passage of the Violin Concerto, which reveals a similarity, structural rather than tonal this time, between Western art music (in this case, Bach) and Hungarian folk music, and again, the very existence of such similarity confirms the legitimacy of Bartok’s approach. The example cited at the beginning of this paper, where Transylvanian instrumental folk music “legitimized” the verbunkos for Bartok, is a similar instance of discovering common stylistic elements in two distinct reper- toires, even though in that case, Western classical music was not part of the equa- tion. And, in my opinion, it is precisely this reassuring similarity between different musical traditions that is emphasized in Kelemen’s performance: to my ear, he Studia Musicologica 33,2012Performance Practice and Philology in Barték's Violin Concerto (1938) 159 plays measures 9-12 of the theme with the structural continuity of a Baroque Fortspinnung and at the same time with the free rubato of a Hungarian folksong. At this point, it is time to take a step back and ask where any of this leaves us in terms of the much-touted issue of musical “authenticity.” What it all comes down to is whether there exists a “gold standard” against which all performances can be measured. We have already seen that Székely’s performance, wonderful and profoundly satisfying as it is, cannot be that standard—simply because Menuhin, Mutter, Midori or Kelemen are not Székely. But even Bart6k’s own recordings of his piano works cannot function as “gold standards”—they are too ... well ... Bartokian, In his lecture “Tradition and Authority”—anthologized in Text and Act—Richard Taruskin cites a fascinating example of how the Prokofiev special- ist Boris Berman (who recorded all of Prokofiev's piano works and has now even written a book on them) goes against the way Prokofiev played and recorded his own music. Taruskin shows that Prokofiev's way of playing was rooted in an old unwritten tradition that modern performers rebel against or choose to ignore, but instead of taking sides between the two approaches, Taruskin simply says, “No, I do not mean that we are to accept Prokoficv’s performance of his own piece because it is corroborated by Tiirk, only that blind modernist prejudice against the unwritten is also deaf.”> If we want to be neither deaf nor blind, we must admit that the only true meaning of authenticity in this case is being true to our selves, if we are performers, discovering our own inner truths through the music. 5. Richard Taruskin, * University Press, 1995) in idem, Text and Act (Oxford and New York: Oxford Studia Musicologica 53, 2012