Out of Doors (Szabadban), suite for piano, Sz. 81, BB 89 (1926) I. Avec tambours et fifres
II. Barcarolle (1:33)
III. Musettes (3:28)
IV. Sons de la nuit (6:06)
V. Poursuite (11:18)
Claude Helffer, piano
In his small piano suite Out of Doors (1926), Béla Bartók explored a number of elements that would become fundamental to his subsequent works. Out of Doors marks the composer's first use of the arch principle, brought to fruition in the String Quartets Nos. 4 and 5 (1928, 1934) and the Concerto for Orchestra (1943/45); likewise, it represents the earliest manifestation of Bartók's characteristic "night music," in which nocturnal sounds--wind, insects, distant revelries--are heard in a setting of dark introspection.
At first glance, Out of Doors is a collection of five character pieces depicting various aspects of Hungarian peasant life. Indeed, the music is based on Hungarian folk elements, but their treatment represents Bartók at his most "modern." The first piece, "With Drums and Pipes," even now maintains its power to startle; deep bass notes hammer out a rude drumbeat as pipes are evoked in the middle register of the keyboard. The chromatic "Barcarolle," marked by strands of irregularly rocking melody drifting from voice to voice, is sinuous and unsettling. "Musettes" was originally an episode in the finale of the composer's Piano Sonata of the same year. Bartók removed it from that score, perhaps feeling that its moderate tempo was inappropriate to the finale's motoric drive; in Out of Doors, it functions as the keystone of the overall arch structure. True to its title, "Musette" is a graphic, burlesque caricature of a bagpiper and his instrument, from the creaking of the bag as it fills with air to the plangent skirling of the dual pipes, complete with cunning evocations of the instrument's "out-of-tune-ness." "The Night's Music" is the longest of the pieces, evoking first a nocturnal silence, then the sounds of crickets and frogs via wisps of tone clusters and croaking figurations. The human element enters with a thoughtful, inward melody, followed by the sounds of distant music, as if from a tavern or encampment. The inward and distant melodies intertwine briefly before the tiny creatures of the night return and darkness subsumes the movement. The finale, "The Chase," recalls the third movement of Bartók's Suite, Op. 14 (1916), but here flight is more graphically depicted, with a suggestion of pursuers in the fierce, explosive chords that punctuate the pell-mell course of the music. [allmusic.com]
Art by Philip Guston
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