''Dance Suite'' (; ), Sz. 77, BB 86a, is a well-known 1923

orchestra An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * String instruments, such as the violin, viola, cello, ...

l work by the Hungarian composer

Béla Bartók Béla Viktor János Bartók (; ; 25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist and ethnomusicologist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Franz Liszt are regarded as Hunga ...

. The composer produced a reduction for piano (Sz. 77, BB 86b) in 1925, though this is less commonly performed.

Composition

Béla Bartók composed the ''Dance Suite'' in 1923 in order to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the union of the cities

Buda Buda (, ) is the part of Budapest, the capital city of Hungary, that lies on the western bank of the Danube. Historically, “Buda” referred only to the royal walled city on Castle Hill (), which was constructed by Béla IV between 1247 and ...

and Pest, to form the Hungarian capital

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

. Then, after its great success, the director of

Universal Edition Universal Edition (UE) is an Austrian classical music publishing firm. Founded in 1901 in Vienna, it originally intended to provide the core classical works and educational works to the Austrian market. The firm soon expanded to become one of t ...

, Emil Hertzka, commissioned from him an arrangement for piano, which was published in 1925. However, he never publicly performed this arrangement, and it was premiered in March 1945, a few months before his death, by his friend

György Sándor György Sándor (; 21 September 1912 – 9 December 2005) was a Hungarian pianist and writer. Early years Sándor was born in Budapest. He studied at the Liszt Academy in Budapest under Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, and debuted as ...

Structure

This suite has six movements, even though some recordings conceive it as one single full-length movement. A typical performance of the whole work would last approximately fifteen minutes. This work consists of five dances with

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

, Wallachian and Hungarian melodies, and a finale that brings together all the previous thematic sketches. There was one more movement, omitted by the composer according to his

mathematical principles Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, theories and theorems that are developed and proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many areas of mathematics, which include numb ...

, which would be placed between the second and the third movement. This movement is called '' Slovakian Dance'', and was finally dismissed and remained unorchestrated.

Recordings

Notable recordings of the orchestral version include: Notable recordings of the piano reduction include:

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Dance Suite (Bartok) Suites by Béla Bartók 1923 compositions 1925 compositions Orchestral compositions by Béla Bartók Orchestral suites Solo piano compositions by Béla Bartók