BARTÓK Piano Quintet, Contrasts | Deutsche Grammophon

In a 3rd album commemorating the 80th anniversary of Bartók’s death on our partner label CAvi music, Hansjacob Staemmler (piano), Sophia Jaffé & Johanna Staemmler (violin), Liisa Randalu (viola) and Peter-Philipp Staemmler (cello) perform Bartók’s weighty, enthralling, technically masterful Piano Quintet in C major Sz. 23, composed between 1903–4. It is also astonishingly mature, considering that the author was a young composer, not yet 25 years old, who had just completed his studies. In these early years, Bartók was just beginning his research on authentic Hungarian and Romanian folk music. He would not undertake his first extended cross-country journeys until 1906, and direct contact with rural music provided the essence for his personal style. Thus, in the Piano Quintet, Bartók’s unmistakable voice is not yet fully developed; the work is still highly influenced by the styles of Brahms and Liszt. 

 Sophia Jaffé (violin), Kilian Herold (clarinet) and Hansjacob Staemmler then perform Contrasts, a work he composed in 1938 in Hungary but premiered in the USA after he emigrated there in 1940. It contains clear stylistic references to the “New World.” None other than renowned jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman had commissioned the work. Echoes of jazz are unmistakable, where Bartók also reveals his appreciation of the music of George Gershwin. However, the work speaks “American” with a distinct Hungarian accent.