2019’s Bartók World Competition (organized by the Liszt Academy) was accompanied by an international musicological symposium organized by the Institute for Musicology of the Research Centre for the Humanities on 14 September, starting at 9 AM. The focus of both the competition and the symposium was the piano. The symposium’s program also featured a presentation of the newest volume of the Bartók Complete Critical Edition, which is being edited by the Bartók Archives of the Institute for Musicology.
The symposium at the Institute’s Bartók Hall included lectures by internationally acknowledged Bartók scholars and by postdoc and doctoral students in musicology. (For the program, click here.) Invited scholars included Malcolm Gillies (Australia & UK), who lectured on Bartók and virtuosity, and Richard Taruskin (USA), who gave a talk on Bartók’s First Piano Concerto. Young scholars and pianists from Hungary, Slovakia, Spain, and the US lectured on various subjects ranging from Bartók’s piano concertos and works for piano solo to his arrangements and editions of keyboard music by other composers.
The third volume of the Bartók Complete Edition was published in March 2019. It features works for piano solo composed between 1914 and 1920 (including well-known items such as the Romanian Folk Dances, Suite op. 14, the 15 Hungarian Peasant Songs, and Improvisations op. 20) edited by László Somfai, former Head of the Bartók Archives and Founding Editor of the Complete Edition. The volume explores the genesis and the sources of these compositions in more detail than any publication before. The symposium concluded with a presentation by Somfai and by pianist Imre Rohmann, Professor at Mozarteum Salzburg.