Dance Suite Bartok

On this specially-priced 8-CD set Zoltan Kocsis performs the complete solo piano music of his fellow Hungarian, B la Bart k. Completed in 2001, these critically acclaimed, definitive performances are the benchmark against which all others are considered.

It was in these terms that Ferruccio Busoni greeted the publication in 1908 of the 14 Bagatelles, in which Béla Bartók conveyed the violent aesthetic impact of his discovery of authentic Hungarian peasant music. Over the next 20 years, up to the magisterial Sonata of 1926, he indefatigably refined an innovative pianistic language: pungent, dissonant, percussive, with multiple new playing techniques, that was to influence the entire 20th century. A master of every style, from Haydn to Boulez by way of Chopin and Chabrier, Alain Planès is revealed here as a Bartókian of the front rank.

The fifth album of Philzuid features works by Béla Bartók, Anders Hillborg and Claude Debussy. Chief conductor Duncan Ward takes you on a journey filled with innovative sounds and with folk music. Bartók developed his own tonal language through elements taken from folk music whilst Anders Hillborg’s surprising tonal language shows the influence of Scandinavian folk music and of Klezmer. Claude Debussy, however, turned Romantic tonality on its head with harmonies and melodies that owed part of their development to Javanese gamelan music.

Composer: Béla Bartók
Conductor: Iván Fischer
Orchestra/Ensemble: Budapest Festival Orchestra, Slovak Folk Ensemble Chorus, Hungarian Radio Chorus

October 21, 2012 marks Sir Georg Solti's centenary and Decca is celebrating this with several important reissues. Sir Georg was an exclusive Decca artist for 50 years.