Back to Bartok
It has taken me almost two weeks to absorb my reaction to a Bartok Birthday Concert at the Unitarian Church in San Francisco.

The pieces that disturbed me the most were his piano variations of some Hungarian folk songs and a very late string quartet.

The Hungarian folk song variations ricochet from country pleasantries to urban anger. It's as if Bartok starts off in the nostalgia of his youth which ironically sparks remembrance of repressed childhood angerr. This then gets reprocessed into loud banging on the keys. Then silence, reflection and another go at the same source with a different result this time.

If therapy were ever set to music, this is what it would sound like.

The painfully healthy resonance for me was that the piece felt like working through the repressed feelings in a marriage to outburst, reconciliation and refound love.

Listening to the string quartet reminded me how much total attentiveness is required. The experience is like trying to experience an entire Shakespeare play in twenty minutes. The movements all end with a low register slightly dissonant chord as if the music could deal better with the vicissitudes of voices rather than with their reconciliation -- leaving that up to the audience to carry home with them.