The Later Bartok
) AS one who feels chilled and repelled by Bartok’s earlier work, I’ must confess that his Music for String Instru- _ ments, Percussion and Celesta (recently | re-heard from 1YC) becomes increasingly attractive on closer acquaintance. In this work of his later period, tha intellectualism, once so arid, has become | bracing and disciplined. The old acro-
batics give way to a _ music which is supple and — | variable in mood, de'manding feats of versatility from the strings, |/merry and moody by turns. Its liveliness is punctuated by the abrupt /exclamations and question marks of drums. Its sadness is deepened and prolonged by the ambiguous echoihg of gongs and 'the chatter of blocks, and by that quaint and _magical instrument the celesta, with suggestions of starlight, ice-crystals and falling water. The ‘limpid and mysterious | quality of this music somehow recalls those last marvellous poems of | Yeats’s old age, written | about the same time, in which the voice out of | the cavern cries only "Rejoice," and the ancient Chinamen look down upon the tragic world with gay and glit-
| tering eyes.
M.K.
J.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19530402.2.25.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 716, 2 April 1953, Page 12
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181The Later Bartok New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 716, 2 April 1953, Page 12
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