Five Hungarian Folksongs for Voice and Orchestra

Program notes

About the Work

Bartók was not only a great composer but one of the founding fathers of ethnomusicology: with his friend Zoltán Kodály he spent years travelling the villages of Hungary and beyond, recording and transcribing thousands of peasant songs on a wax-cylinder phonograph. That folk material became the lifeblood of his own music, and he also made many beautiful arrangements of the songs themselves. These Five Hungarian Folksongs for voice and orchestra are drawn from his larger 1929 set of Twenty Hungarian Folk Songs for voice and piano; in 1933 Bartók orchestrated five of them for the alto Mária Basilides, who gave the first performance of the orchestral version.

In these settings Bartók treats the folk melodies with great care and artistry, preserving their authentic character while clothing them in subtle, colourful orchestral dress. They range from melancholy laments to lively, dancing numbers, offering an intimate, song-filled interlude between the grand concerto and the Spanish ballet. They also reveal the tender, deeply humane side of a composer often thought of as severe.

What to Listen For

Listen for the directness and authenticity of the folk melodies themselves (these are real Hungarian peasant songs, with their distinctive modal inflections and speech-like rhythms) and for the sensitivity of Bartók’s orchestration, which colours and supports the voice without ever overwhelming the simple tunes.

The set moves through contrasting moods: listen for the sorrowful, inward songs (laments of loneliness or sorrow) set against more animated, dance-like numbers full of rhythmic life. The mezzo-soprano (here Rinat Shaham) carries the songs; follow the words and the way Bartók matches the music to each text’s character. It is a brief but rewarding glimpse of Bartók the folk-song collector and miniaturist, and a reminder of the roots from which his whole musical language grew.