Lebrecht Weekly | Did Bartok Play Klezmer?

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Jonathan Leibowitz: Eastern Reflections (Delphian)

Did Bartok play klezmer? The Hungarian composer enthused over many authentic forms of folk music and spent his summers tracking them down across the Balkans, the Iberian peninsula and north Africa. Later, exiled in America in 1938, Bartok composed Contrasts for the Jewish jazz clarinettist Benny Goodman, who played it without inflection or schmalz as if he were a country vicar somewhere in Virginia.

This interpretation changes everything. Leibowitz is a young Israeli who plays Bartok like a distant cousin, full of familiar expressions and family secrets. His account of Contrasts is truly contrasting, giving Bartok’s folk tunes a Chassidic twist, turning Carnegie Hall stiff-collars into a chasseneh-tanz. His partners in this act of subversion are the Australian pianist Joseph Havlat and the French violinist Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux, members of a London musical melting pot that has somehow survived Brexit. Whatever. Contrasts will never sound the same again.

The other pieces on this captivating album are a pair of early dances by Gyorgy Ligeti, highly charged and naughty-boy erotic, a magical 1945 clarinet sonata by the Polish-Jewish Mieczyslaw Weinberg and a hatful of short pieces by Witold Lutoslawski and Dmitri Shostakovich. Somebody had illicit fun assembling this programme. You’re going to have even more fun dancing to it.

This page is also available in / Cette page est également disponible en: Francais (French)