Dance Suite (; ), Sz. 77, BB 86a, is a well-known 1923 orchestral work by the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. The composer produced a reduction for piano (Sz. 77, BB 86b) in 1925, though this is less commonly performed.
Composition Béla Bartók composed the Dance Suite in 1923 in order to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the union of the cities Buda and Pest, to form the Hungarian capital Budapest. Then, after its great success, the director of Universal Edition, Emil Hertzka, commissioned from him an arrangement for piano, which was published in 1925. However, he never publicly performed this arrangement, and it was premiered in March 1945, a few months before his death, by his friend György Sándor.
The work premiered on 19 November 1923 in Budapest, alongside Ernst von Dohnányi's Festival Overture and Zoltán Kodály's Psalmus Hungaricus. The British premiere was on 10 August 1925 at the Promenade Concerts, at Queen's Hall, under the baton of Henry Wood.
Structure This suite has six movements, even though some recordings conceive it as one single full-length movement. A typical performance of the whole work would last approximately fifteen minutes.
This work consists of five dances with Arabic, Romanian, Wallachian and Hungarian melodies, and a finale that brings together all the previous thematic sketches. There was one more movement, omitted by the composer according to his mathematical principles, which would be placed between the second and the third movement. This movement is called Slovakian Dance, and was finally dismissed and remained unorchestrated.
Recordings
Notable recordings of the orchestral version include: OrchestraConductorRecord CompanyYear of RecordingFormatLondon Philharmonic OrchestraGeorg SoltiDecca Records1952LPRIAS Symphony OrchestraFerenc FricsayDeutsche Grammophon1953LPPhilharmonia OrchestraIgor MarkevitchHis Master's Voice1954LPPhilharmonia HungaricaAntal DorátiMercury Records1958LPReview of LP reissue on Speaker's Corner. Classic Record Collector, Summer 2007, 49:67Symphony Orchestra of Hungarian Radio and TelevisionGyörgy LehelDeutsche Grammophon1962LPOrchestre de la Suisse RomandeErnest AnsermetDecca Records1964LPNew York Philharmonic OrchestraPierre BoulezColumbia1972LPCzech Philharmonic OrchestraZdeněk KošlerPanton1973LPDiscographical data from The CHARM Discography, Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music, <http://www.charm.kcl.ac.uk/about/about_structure>, accessed 5 September 2011.Stuttgart Radio Symphony OrchestraNeville MarrinerCapriccio1994CDBournemouth Symphony OrchestraMarin AlsopNaxos Records2005CDNHK Symphony OrchestraPaavo JärviRCA Red Seal2020CDWDR Symphony Orchestra CologneCristian MăcelaruLinn2023CD
Notable recordings of the piano reduction include: Piano SoloRecord CompanyYear of RecordingFormatAndrás SchiffDenon Records / Brilliant Classics1980CDJenő JandóNaxos Records2002CD
References
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