Bartók Interpretation and National Music

Zoltán Kocsis Talks to Zoltán Farkas

There is a popular notion that “Bartók is properly understood by Hungarian musicians”. To perform Bartók authentically do you have to know Hungarian?

How the language is spoken is certainly important. Even so, I usually give the counter example of the Juilliard Quartet; they were never a Hungarian group, none of them has any connection with Hungary, yet even so they've managed to learn Bartók's musical language.

We should say the string quartets are where this kind of knowledge is least needed, since they bear least the imprints of the national character. Most of the piano works require you to be Hungarian or Eastern European. I would not insist on being Hungarian, since someone Eastern European can get the essence of the music not just of their own country but also that of their neighbouring countries better than someone from another continent or Western Europe.

I feel that – especially recently – the tradition of performing Bartók has taken a turn that clearly guarantees him a place in the European canon, while stripping him of those characteristics without which Bartók's music may no longer be Bartók...

A mishmash is most evident in the orchestral works, after all it's much more difficult on an instrument comprising eighty individuals to realize the characteristic things that Bartók so easily brings into relief by himself on the piano. My own view, and one often criticized, is that you don't have to be born into a nation in order to play its music well. It's simply a matter of talent.

But in Bartók's case, an acquaintance with folk music is unavoidable. I would have to look very hard in music to find another composer who is so much intertwined with folk music, and whose music is so much inspired by it. Even Stravinsky, as he often said, owes far less to folk music inspiration. The folk-style of Janáček has real folk-music behind it but no conscious attempt at systematization or any deep knowledge of folk music as a whole, as we find in Bartók and Kodály.

Regarding Bartók, we cannot overlook the fact that some (perhaps even most) of his folk-song arrangements, or music of demonstrably folk music inspiration, probably come from Romanian folk music.

Bartók's music is a ‘tough morsel to chew', because it consists of a huge number of elements. Just to look at it superficially, we can see at least five sources. The national romantic idiom with reminiscences of a Ferenc Erkel-flavoured ‘heel-clicking' ‘verbunkos' style, the French influence, folk-song, the tangential effect of the second Viennese School, then Stravinsky's appearance on the scene, and finally the arrival of the period when, having merged all these together, he writes what he wants and as he wants it. The last I would date from around the Fifth String Quartet, after which Bartók doesn't concern himself much with questions of style. To play Bartók, you must in fact know all five styles at ‘native speaker' level.

You have made a complete recording of Bartók's piano works which is a benchmark. Anyone dealing seriously with Bartók must take into consideration your set of CDs. Now that you are the chief conductor of the Hungarian National Philharmonic, have you thought of facing the challenge of doing the same for the orchestral works?

Certainly we should do it. The trouble is, I don't like complete recorded editions. The simplest explanation is probably that they include the ‘residue'. Residue in the bad sense. The common approach to a complete recorded edition is “the important works come first, and then we'll somehow throw in all the others, the less interesting.” Having said so much to denigrate I agree with Boulez, when he says: “I'd rather hear and play the scrips and scraps of the great composers than possibly good works by the lesser composers.” I am the same: an idea rejected by Bartók is of more value to me than the best work by a recognized second-rate Western composer. It was in this spirit that I tried to approach the complete recording of the solo piano works. I'd like to do the same with the orchestral works, too.

From my point of view there is the question of whether Bartók's system of agogics so characteristic of his playing (I would venture to say it was what taught me the most) can be realized with an orchestra. My answer is definitely that it can. But you have to want to do it. For example take the eight syllable line melody in the middle of the 3rdmovement of the Concerto for Orchestra which can be sung to lots of different words of folksongs, like “Fehér László lovat lopott” (László Fehér stole some horses), “Kalapom a Tiszán úszkál” (My hat's floating on the Tisza) etc. You have to learn some of the words, and play the whole viola part as though it was singing them. Then it will be as it should be. Of course, you can teach foreign orchestras to do it, perhaps in translation. I think music exceeds language. Yet at the same time language remains important. It's not so important, as it happens, in the Miraculous Mandarin, but now I can't imagine the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta or the Divertimento without some connection with language being present in the performance. I consider one of the best recordings so far of the Divertimento to be the one with the Camerata Academica by Sándor Végh. In it I can feel that from the point of view of the string playing, the idiom and its Eastern European character, this performance is so far the best.

I'll give you another example! There's a ritornello section in the Dance Suite which appears many times, and many conductors make the mistake of interpreting it as a kind of slow item, just as in the fourth movement of the Dance Suite they make the same mistake. (Another example of ignoring Bartók's markings.) So we have two things in the Dance Suite which – to put it kindly – make the performance boring, and not put kindly are sloppiness, superficiality, and a complete neglect of the composer's intentions. A clearly perceptible and easily understood counter-argument is that it is a Dance suite, hence the Ritornello is also dance-like, and what is apparently a slow fourth movement is also some form of dance. The Dance Suite is one of Bartók's hardest works, because you have to absorb many idioms and moods, since the piece is very heterogeneous.

I've heard people say over and over again that you needn't take the metronome markings too seriously, since Bartók himself didn't do it either. Similarly it has been said about the folk element that it is perhaps not the most important aspect of Bartók's music, and if we discard it, then Bartók is just as much a classic as other European composers. I don't agree. Folk music is so amalgamated with the other ingredients of his music that it is impossible to strip him of it, like stripping off a coat. Bartók's own playing shows us the path we should follow when playing his music, and I feel many musicians are not on that path today.

(The Hungarian Quarterly, vol. 46, Spring 2005 – excerpts)