A Second or Two

This montage from our Podcast Vault revisits a post from February 1, 2013. It can be found in our archives at  https://archive.org/details/Pcast090

 =====================================================================

For a third week un a row, our daily podcasts exploited past thematic arcs to inform our posts, and this week we relied on two similar arcs – “Terrible Twos” (from 2012) and “My Number Two Obsession” from 2013. Today’s Podcast Vault selection comes from the 2013 set featuring “second works”, or "number twos" from Bach to Buczynski. The original post discusses the individual works in good detail, so I have nothing much to add.

Featured are a couple of "second rhapsodies". Both Debussy and Gershwin had their "first rhapsodies" featured in past montages. To keep the theme going, as filler, I thought I would share Béla Bartók’s second rhapsody for violin and piano. Rhapsody No. 2 was subsequently arranged with orchestra accompaniment - composed in 1928 and orchestrated in 1929. The orchestral version was revised in 1935, and the version with piano in 1945. It is dedicated to Hungarian violinist Zoltán Székely, who later became the first violinist of the Hungarian String Quartet in 1937, two years after the founding of the ensemble.

The performance here is if the version for violin and orchestra – Isaac Stern is soloist, Leonard Bernstein conducts the New York Philharmonic.

I think you will (still) love this music too.