Béla Bartók
composed in the spirit of Hungarian folk music even when his works did not show the unambiguous presence of a Hungarian folk song. The concert celebrating the composer's birthday puts Hungarian folk music, or to use Bartók's term, "Hungarian peasant songs” in the spotlight. Hungarian Sketches is a 1931 arrangement of earlier piano pieces treating folk songs. Two Pictures uses the tools of impressionism to depict the Hungarian countryside. Dance Suite, composed in 1923 for the 50th anniversary of the unification of Pest, Buda and Óbuda was originally intended to present motifs characteristic of folk music from Transdanubia. Emerging also from behind the percussion effects of Allegro barbaro is a theme evoking the illusion of folk song, while Cantata profana seeks to formulate Bartók's guiding principle, expressed by him several times, of the brotherhood of peoples.
