Bartók Béla, ifj.: Chronicles of Béla Bartók's Life (Budapest, 2021)
Great Concert Tours on Two Continents (1922–1931)
GREAT CONCERT TOURS ON TWO CONTINENTS (1 922-1 931 ) 1922 10 April - Bartok writes his wife: “It is quite strange that we already played the sonata 6 times till now, more or less publicly, while in Pest nobody has heard it yet!” He gives an account of the appearances up to then, also writing about Ravel and Stravinsky. 12 April - Bartok puts some of his pieces on Pleyela. 15 April - He writes letters to his family from Paris: to his sister in Szöllős Puszta (about the dense traffic of automobiles which makes crossing streets difficult!), to his son in Budapest and to his mother in Pozsony. - In the evening he has dinner with the Hungarian ambassador in Hungarian company. 16 April - In the evening he travels from Paris to Frankfurt a/M. There he stays at 117 Forsthausstrasse (it became Kennedy Allee in 1978). 24 April - At a Bartok evening of chamber music at the small concert hall of the Frankfurt Saalbau he plays Sonata for Violin and Piano with Adolf Rebner, then as soloist Suite, Burlesques Nos. 2 and 3, Dirge No. 1, Bear Dance, and Rumanian Dance No. 1. - The Rebner-Zeitlin- Groell-Frank String Quartet perform Quartet No. 1. 26 April - On a picture postcard he writes his mother about the enthusiastic reception of his concert, and mentions that the violinist and the quartet played very badly. The stage performance planned in Frankfurt was first postponed to 6 May; although Bartok didn’t want to wait even this long, yet - despite a further postponement, this time to the 13th - he remains after all, and takes part in the rehearsals. 9 May - He is complaining on a postcard to Mrs Milch b. Etelka Freund about conditions in Germany, where “everything is falling apart” and where only “One man is of any ... value, and even that is Szenkár from Budapest”. 11 May - He writes his wife in Szöllős Puszta that he had already wanted to leave, preparations being so lousy, but the situation improved somewhat after all; the orchestra is functioning better already, and as 211
