I can see a red (slightly pink-ish) rose, Mary.
As for you, it sounds like 'there is no rose' (
).
Ian, Milly, Bartok didn't just write 'From the diary', he also mimicked insect noises in a number of his 'night-music' movements, such as the slow movement of the Third Piano Concerto. Ian, been meaning to ask you for ages what you think of the Bartok piano concertos ...
Yes - when composing the slow movement of the Third he went out and transcribed insect and bird noises, just like Messiaen after him. I love all three of them, t-i-n, also the Rhapsody and to a lesser extent the Scherzo for piano and orchestra. The Second suffers from being played in a too-rigid way so often, as if it were Stravinsky's 'Danse Russe' from
Petrouchka (incidentally, Bartok used to play the
Three Movements from Petrouchka in concert, though there is no known recording of him doing so). The second movement is a most Ivesian quality, though with more directional harmonic motion, whilst the alternating major seconds in the piano in the middle section, alternately played with the thumb, clearly derive from the equivalent writing in Ravel's
Gaspard de la Nuit (I reckon the whole section was influenced quite strongly by 'Scarbo'). Do you know my teacher's recordings of them on Vox (don't get the later Sony ones)? Wonderful, and extremely cheap.
