Gathering Music this Sunday: For Children by Béla Bartók

While I'm still practicing the next Scarlatti piece, this Sunday it will be a few short selections from Bartok's For Children. Not just a great pianist and composer, Bartok was also a pedagogue. He wrote many graded instructional pieces in his own style (the less dissonant version of it). The melodies were of East European origin: Romanian, Slovak, Hungarian, Transylvanian, etc. In these For Children selections Bartok uses Romanian and Slovak melodies.

– Brian Zayman