In Bartók Remembered, Malcolm Gillies has brought us closer to this man through a collection of memoirs written by those who knew him best. The volume contains nearly one hundred recollections of Bartók, from his mother’s memories of his early years in provincial Hungary, to assorted reminiscences of his last years in New York. Bartók’s virtuosic Concerto for Orchestra, his opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, and his Mikrokosmos for solo piano are some of the works by this great Hungarian composer that are admired and performed throughout the Western world. Yet Béla Bartók, the man, remains something of an enigma—remote, ascetic, uncompromising in his person and in his art.
