Classical music touches us in a very special way, completely differently than other genres of music do, even when it comes to our favorite songs. It simply overtakes us, one cannot listen to it superficially, you devote your self to it and when you really let yourself go \u2013 you sail away, without ever leaving your chair. Not every piece of music affects us in the same way, of course – it depends on your taste and sensibility. For some \u2013 Rachmaninoff is the beginning and the end of everything, for others Mozart is just the right measure for the complete life balance. Perhaps Chopin, as pure emotion, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, Satie\u2026 the list is endless. So, what should be the starting point when we are little, that is, what to play to our kids so they too can step into the magical world of classical music in the right way?<\/p>\n
I guess you will rarely find a classical repertoire connoisseur who would say Bela Bartok is a suitable composer for such purpose. His main achievements regard collecting folk music and, of course, composing. His orchestral works, though, in order to be properly understood, consider great attention and experience in listening to classical music of the 20th<\/sup> century. The librettos of his \u2018fairytale\u2019 pieces can easily compete with the horror movie scenarios, so it isn\u2019t quite the reading material you would choose as a good night story for your child (The Bluebeard\u2019s Castle, for example). However, Bartok found his place here because many of us when we were little were, not being aware of it, preparing for his music, thanks to Walt Disney.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n \u00a0The concert began, the orchestra starts playing the theme from the ballet The wooden prince<\/i>. It is the first time I listen to this piece, but from the very start, I recognize the melody. It brings something dear and distant back to my mind. Music can take us through the unpredictable paths of mind and soul, but this was unexpected \u2013 the feeling of something forgotten sneaked up on me as if it came from another time; from a time when we did not even think about time\u2026 From a time when we were children. From the \u2018land before time\u2019.<\/p>\n And there it is \u2013 the answer to how Bartok caused the sudden return to childhood \u2013 surely not because of the fairytale about the prince and the princess. The trick is that his ballet starts with the almost identical motif in wind instruments as the one I remembered from the touching Disney\u2019s cartoon which marked the childhood of many generations, especially the ones born during the \u201980s: \u2018The Land Before Time\u2019. To be precise, the beginning of the theme The Great Migration<\/i> is in a great measure similar to Bartok\u2019s Introduction. James Horner \u2013 the author of many legendary movie themes, among others the best known are maybe the ones from Titanic and Avatar \u2013 composed the soundtrack. The fact that he probably got his inspiration from Bartok\u2019s music is not a big surprise \u2013 what would fit the tonal description of the ‘giants’ that once lived on Earth better than this, although vanguard, deeply archaic music with its roots deriving from the Hungarian folklore?!<\/p>\n