Béla Bartók: Romanian Christmas Carols This is one of my favorite piece based on folk music. Colinde are Christmas carols which are traditionally sang at villages during Christmas, they have both pagan and Christian origins, and are usually sang by young boys going from house to house while people give them food and small gifts. Béla Bartók, besides researching Hungarian folk music, travelled around Eastern and Southern Europe (and to North Africa and Turkey) to research folk music by other nations. He was one of the first musicologists to research Romanian folk music, and later he wrote different pieces based on this folklore. Romanian folk dances and Two Romanian dances are the most well know, but in my opinion this suite is the most beautiful. He composed this piece in 1915, and it contains twenty songs from different regions of Romania.
Zoltán Kocsis (1952-2016) was a famous pianist, and one of the best interpreters of Bartók’s piano music.
Noémi Baki-Szmaler, guest editor - @une-barque-sur-l-ocean
