Playing the Music

I am writing this post not as a music critic but as a music listener. I am writing to recommend a recording that moves me like none other that I have ever heard. It is a recording of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata by the violinist Josef Szigeti and the composer Bela Bartok at the piano. The recording was made April 13, 1940, at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.

Both Szigeti and Bartok were refugees from their native Hungary. Szigeti had come to the United States first. Bartok had arrived two days before this recording was made. They were grieving for their country, which they deeply loved.

People with a proper musical education can detect imperfection in this performance — mostly departures from the apparent intentions of the composer. I find it hard to imagine that Beethoven would have objected to anything in this performance. He was beginning to go deaf when he composed this sonata, and was unsure of his ability to test the transcription of the music in his head with actual performance. If only he could have heard this.

What some people might object to, I love. Szigeti and Bartok were playing the music, not the notes. It is, the critics say, a very emotional, romantic, Eastern European way of playing the music. The passionate nature of the performance no doubt owes something to what was happening in the world at the time, but it has lost nothing with the passage of time. And something is always happening in the world anyway.