The first volume of an exciting 4 CD project: the complete works for violin of the great Hungarian 20-th century composer Béla Bartók.

The first volume offers early works and transcriptions, most of them with strong Hungarian folk music influence. Later volumes will include the violin sonatas, the solo sonata and the violin concertos. Excellent performances by Hungarian violinist Antal Zalai (formerly names Szalai) and Jozsef Balog, who already proved their superb skills in their recording of the Enescu violin sonatas on Brilliant Classics 9165.

In the early 1900s the young composer had studied many of Strauss’s scores, attempting a symphony in E flat. Gradually the music of his native Hungary began influence his musical voice as can be heard in the E minor violin sonata. The Austro-German musical hold on him was slipping. He took to wearing Hungarian national clothes, and rebelled at speaking German at home. Shortly after completing the violin sonata in 1903 he left for the countryside where he became interested in the folk music and songs of his countrymen. His research with fellow composer Zoltan Kodaly of Hungarian folk music is famous, but Bartók went beyond national boundaries for inspiration, as can be heard in the Transylvanian, Romanian and Slovak folk material featured on this disc of his early works for violin and piano.