Beskrivning
Mikrokosmos 6
Bela Bartok
153 Progressive Piano Pieces
Nos. 140-153
Volume number: Vol. 6
Instrumentation: piano
Language: English – French – German – Hungarian
Binding: Saddle stitching
Difficulty: intermediate to advanced
Publisher: Boosey & Hawkes, London
Page number: 64
Information från utgivaren om: Mikrokosmos 6
This is the final volume in Mikrokosmos, Bartók’s series of 153 pieces that gradually increase in technical and interpretive difficulty. Obviously, it contains the most challenging works, and arguably the finest, though one can make a strong case for Volumes 4 and 5, too. This last book’s 14 pieces are the fewest in any volume by far: the first contains 36; the second and third 30 each; and Volumes 4 and 5 have 25 and 18, respectively. Yet the works in this final group are on average the longest, having a duration of about two minutes per work, quite a substantial length in a collection of mostly Lilliputian proportions.
Volume 6 opens with Free Variations (No. 140), a percussive driving piece requiring an all-inclusive technique. Its rhythmic vigor and metric changes in the outer sections provide much color, while the otherworldly nature of the brief middle section offers splendid contrast. Subject and Reflection follows, an ingenious work whose ”subject” materials are ”reflected” in a deftly distorted manner.
From the Diary of a Fly (No. 142) is unusually compelling in its depiction of a fly’s last-second escape from a spider and his cobweb. Humming and buzzing sounds and a sense of desperation are brilliantly enacted here. Two pieces with typically pedagogical-sounding titles follow, Divided Arpeggios and Minor Seconds, Major Sevenths. Both offer considerable expressive depth but the latter, the longest piece in Mikrokosmos, at about four minutes, arguably conveys a greater profundity than any other work in Volume 6.
Innehåll för: Mikrokosmos 6
Foreword to the Definitive Edition
Preface by the Composer
Free Variations
Subject and Reflection
From the Diary of a Fly
Divided Arpeggios
Minor Seconds, Major Sevenths
Chromatic Invention (3)
Ostinato
March
Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm (1)
Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm (2)
Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm (3)
Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm (4)
Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm (5)
Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm (6)
Appendix: Notes