Bartok - Divertimento

Another great Bartok piece! Although it is rarely included in his canon of masterpieces, I find it heartstoppingly beautiful. Ever since I wrote a program note about it, maybe 20 years ago, for the Royal Flanders Philharmonic (now De Filharmonie) the Divertimento has been very dear to me. Despite its ostensibly genial and sunny disposition I find it a very disquieting work which is pervaded by an atmosphere of doubt and even doom. That it was hastily written in those last fateful days in August 1939 before a cataclysm swept over Europe is a circumstance that I find difficult to dismiss. The works that, for me, show a musical and emotional kinship with this music all have to do with war: Strauss' Metamorphosen and Britten's War Requiem. As regards the latter I am particularly thinking of the undulating theme in the strings that underpins the moving Agnus Dei. It so closely resembles the Divertimento's main theme from the Molto Adagio that I wonder whether Britten was consciously quoting it.

I am lucky to have a number of very good recordings of the Divertimento. The one that has been longest in my collection is a Capriccio recording dating from 1988 by the Camerata Academica des Mozarteums Salzburg, led by the venerable Sandor Vegh. Then there is also an ECM recording with the Camerata Bern under Thomas Zehetmair. Finally, an LP version with Antal Dorati and the BBC Symphony Orchestra (the back side of a Music for Strings etc which I found only soso).

All of them have great qualities. I will get back to them in a separate post.