Dance Suite

Bartók composed his Dance Suite in 1923, for a concert celebrating the unification of the Hungarian cities of Buda, Pest and Óbuda into Budapest, the capital of the newly founded Hungarian republic. The work’s premiere on 19 November 1923 was a spectacular success, and helped to establish Bartók’s international reputation as one of the leading composers of his time. Although acclaimed locally as a Hungarian national masterpiece, the Dance Suite nonetheless takes a cosmopolitan approach to its source material, which related to Bartók’s wide-ranging travels as a folk music collector. The first of the work’s six movements begins with a strongly chromatic bassoon theme, derived from Moroccan dance-music (although the theme itself, like all those in the Dance Suite, is Bartók’s own creation). Then comes a beautiful, Hungarian-sounding violin melody, which is to feature in the other movements like an ongoing refrain. This interplay of styles and moods then develops into a brilliantly colourful sequence of contrasting episodes, intercutting passages of quiet stillness and driving rhythmic invention.