2,523 views

Watch
- Search Videos
  
  Advanced search »
- Submit a New Video
Discuss
About
- Try clicking on the various channels to see videos posted to that channel - if you're into music you can click the Music channel to get more music sifts - go on and explore! Use the "hotness" when you have opened the channel link to get videos that have gotten a lot of votes, or use "newness" to have a look at the new sifts.
  When browsing sifts you like, have a look at the Related Posts list to see other related videos, click the tags under the video title to see more sifts tagged with the same tags or have a look at other sifts from the same user in the More Posts By list. If the sifted video is in a play list, have a look at the play list to see other interesting videos the Sift users have linked together.
  Enter the Sift Lounge to chat with online sifters about anything and everything, or read interesting posts in the Sift Talk forum.
  The Top New Videos list is always full of interesting, current videos. It is always recommended that you have a look through the Top New Videos, but also have a look at these:
  - Upcoming Unsifted Videos - active video submissions that neither are published to the front page nor archived to the submitter's personal queue
- Have you seen a really funny, surprising, scary, interesting, cute or in any other way extra good quality video?
  Post and share it here - VideoSift is the best video aggregator on the Web, where we share, discuss, promote, and interact with the best videos out there on the web. Post it here, and share it with the large community of video-interested users. And - you are guaranteed to find more very good videos here already!
  Mind you, we only share videos you discover that someone else has made; if you "self link," by posting a video you have made, have posted or have interests in, you risk the ban hammer - read the posting guidelines before posting. The sift is NOT for promoting your own videos - it is for sharing videos others have made.
  Submit a Video Now »
Login

Bartók: Contrasts for Clarinet, Violin & Piano (Mvt I + II)

submitted by Ornthoron

1 decade 5 years 1 month 2 weeks ago

I. Recruiting Dance. Moderato, ben ritmato
II. Relaxation. Lento

Yehudi Menuhin: Violin
Thea King: Clarinet
Jeremy Menuhin: Piano

See the last movement here:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Bart-k-Contrasts-for-Clarinet-Violin-Piano-Mvt-III

by Eric Tishkoff:

What started in August 1938 as a casual conversation between József Szigeti and Benny Goodman very quickly turned into a significant chamber work by one of the world's leading composers, Béla Bartók (1881-1945). Szigeti, a pre-eminent violinist of the time, sent the request to Bartók-although, it was the world-renown jazz clarinetist Goodman who officially commissioned (i.e., paid for) the work. In his letter, Szigeti requested a duo for clarinet and violin with piano accompaniment, consisting of two contrasting movements, 6-7 minutes in duration, with cadenzas for both the clarinet and violin.

Szigeti was probably expecting a short, flashy show-tune, in which case, he got much more than he bargained for. Janos Karpati writes (Bartok's Chamber Music, Stuyvesant, NY, Pendragon Press, 1976, p. 476) "Despite the commission, Bartók composed not what is known as a concert piece, but a chamber-music work, a worthy cousin of the string quartets and sonatas, which in both its material and structure follows the laws of chamber-music form."

Contrasts is a three movement work nearly three times the duration of the original request. The music is an amalgam of abstracted Hungarian folk music combined with Rumanian dance melodies, Bulgarian and Greek meters, and a highly personalized, first-class command of 20th century compositional techniques. The second movement was omitted from the first performance. Apparently, Bartók was trying to adhere strictly to the original commission for two movements. However, internal evidence convincingly suggests that the middle movement was conceived along with the other two.

Verbunkos, the first movement, is based on a dance, and characterized by a bouncy rhythmic figure (dotted eight-sixteenth) and passages that alternate between slow determination and medium agitation. The second movement, Piheno (relaxation), is purely atmospheric. Its lack of a strong pulse stands in contrast to the driving beats in both the outer movements.