Word: bartokian
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Baldwin's Piano Quartet (1957) was a single, balanced movement in C-sharp. Solidly constructed, it had many varied sonorities and not a few Bartokian turns. I was a bit disturbed by the unrelievedly grim and anguished cerebration that the music betrays. I also question the wisdom of starting a quartet with such a lengthy duet for violin and 'cello (which almost guarantees that the flute, being cold, will enter out of tune) and of inserting such a long piano solo in the middle: both the players and the audience will feel cheated. I must single out Lawrence Lesser...
...writing a slow movement (which often trips up even the best-established composers). Frederic Rzewski '58's Sonata for Violin and Piano was most successful in the fast outer movements. The first movement, in a modified sonata-form with a bit too much stop-and-go, adopted a Bartokian brutality and approach to dissonance; and the finale dared to end softly with an effective pizzicato and staccato section. Rzewski failed to realize, however, that the bottom range of the violin is easily covered up by too heavy a piano accompaniment. And his piano texture tended to fall into two extremes...
Bartok: Excerpts from Mikrokosmos (Bela Bartok, piano; Columbia, 2 sides LP). Another of the "Meet the Composer" series, this one contains 35 of the original set of 153 studies in Bartokian rhythm and melody. Sample titles: Alternating Thirds, From the Diary of a Fly, Wrestling, Minor Seconds, Triplets in 9/8 Time. Performance: excellent. Recording: good...