Piano Music of Bela Bartok, Series I

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Introduction To Bartok
Review: As this edition contains many pieces for beginners and intermediates, it is a valuable introduction to the tonal world of Bela Bartok. Would be good for recital pieces for students or just to sight read through for more advanced pupils. Some of the pieces sound much more difficult than they are! Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Introduction To Bartok
Review: As this edition contains many pieces for beginners and intermediates, it is a valuable introduction to the tonal world of Bela Bartok. Would be good for recital pieces for students or just to sight read through for more advanced pupils. Some of the pieces sound much more difficult than they are! Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: Great edition of early Bartok
Review: This is a great edition of Bartok's early piano music. The level ranges from easy but attractive pieces like the songs in "For Children" (based on Bartok's fascinating versions of Hungarian and Slovak folk melodies), to the more difficult "Two Elegies" and "Rhapsody". It also includes the "Fourteen Bagatelles", "Seven Sketches Op. 9", "Four Dirges", and some other minor pieces. I found a lot of the music absolutely impossible to play, since I'm not an accomplished pianist, but the songs in "For Children" were very attractive, even jazzy. Ignore the title -- most of the songs don't sound like children's music at all. They were the result of Bartok's earliest fieldwork in Hungarian and Slovak folkmusic, which he spent the rest of his life studying, recording, and reworking into distinctively modern forms. Despite the simplicity of the original songs, they led directly to his development as one of the most original and interesting composers of the 20th century.

Rating:
Summary: Great edition of early Bartok
Review: This is a great edition of Bartok's early piano music. The level ranges from easy but attractive pieces like the songs in "For Children" (based on Bartok's fascinating versions of Hungarian and Slovak folk melodies), to the more difficult "Two Elegies" and "Rhapsody". It also includes the "Fourteen Bagatelles", "Seven Sketches Op. 9", "Four Dirges", and some other minor pieces. I found a lot of the music absolutely impossible to play, since I'm not an accomplished pianist, but the songs in "For Children" were very attractive, even jazzy. Ignore the title -- most of the songs don't sound like children's music at all. They were the result of Bartok's earliest fieldwork in Hungarian and Slovak folkmusic, which he spent the rest of his life studying, recording, and reworking into distinctively modern forms. Despite the simplicity of the original songs, they led directly to his development as one of the most original and interesting composers of the 20th century.