When Sir Georg Solti ran into his old classmate Gyorgy Sandor in Salzburg a couple of summers ago, the two had much to reminisce about. Both had been students at Budapest’s famous Liszt Academy of Music. “I remember Georg well,” says Sandor. “He was a superb pianist and a student of Dohnanyi. Somehow all of the performing students went to Dohnanyi, which I did too; but after a year and a half Bartok listened to me, and I stayed with him from there on.” Sandor and Solti also share a deep love for the music of Bartok, and it wasn’t long before Bartok came up in their conversation.
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Sandor told Solti of the recent discovery of a transcription for solo piano, in Bartok’s own hand, of his famous Concerto for Orchestra, arguably the greatest orchestral piece of the 20th century. “It was his son Peter Bartok who first told me about the score about three years ago,” says Sandor. “There were terrible lawsuits concerning Bartok’s music, and royalties in all sorts of directions. The Hungarian government, the publishers, the family, were all suing and countersuing one another for rights. When Bartok’s widow died three or four years ago, Peter finally received all of his manuscripts. I’m in touch with Peter all the time, and when he found the manuscript, he called me immediately and told me about it. He put me in charge of making it playable and getting it ready for publication.”
Bartok chose Sandor to premiere several of his works, and Sandor was a constant friend and confidant during Bartok’s tragic last years in the States, from 1940 to 1945. “I had come over in 1939 for my Carnegie Hall debut,” Sandor recalls, “and given the Nazi takeover, saw no point in returning home once I arrived here. Bartok came a year later, as soon as his mother died.” Sandor denies the often-stated idea that the American public rejected Bartok. “When he arrived here, you already had Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Hindemith, Einstein, Rachmaninoff, Horowitz, Rubinstein. The country had been invaded by genius, all within a very short time, and it took time to absorb and appreciate all of them. If Bartok had lived longer, he would have been where he should be, but as it was, he just took his turn. If an orchestra gave an all-Bartok concert, the next time it would be an all-Stravinsky or all-Hindemith concert.
The world premiere of the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra transcription will make up the second half of Sandor’s Allied Arts recital; the first half will consist of music of Bach, Busoni, Beethoven, Liszt, and Debussy. The program takes place Sunday afternoon at 3 at Orchestra Hall, 220 S. Michigan; tickets are $5 to $25. Call 435-6666 for further information.
