fwriction

Andrew Ervin’s new book, Extraordinary Renditions, gets a music playlist, via Largehearted Boy’s Book Notes. I like everything that’s happening here:

Béla Bartók, “Konstrasztok”

If there’s any one piece of music that can explain how the three parts of Extraordinary Renditions fit together, this is it. Bartók completed his “Konstrasztok” in 1938, a tumultuous time in his native Hungary to say the least. It’s scored for piano, violin, and clarinet, three instruments that don’t always play nicely together here; the contrasts, as the title suggests, are clearly more important than the harmonies. There’s an amazing recording from 1940 with Bartók himself on the piano, József Szigeti on violin, and Benny Goodman of all people on clarinet. Even if Szigeti appears to shit the bed every once in a while, or maybe because he shits the bed every once in a while, this recording has meant a great deal to the development of this book as a whole.