Bartók Béla, ifj.: Chronicles of Béla Bartók's Life (Budapest, 2021)

Great Concert Tours on Two Continents (1922–1931)

1922

CHRONICLES OF BÉLA

BARTOK'S

LIFE

for the stage, it is better than the one in Budapest.

13 May

- Premiere of The Wooden Prince and Bluebeards Castle at the Opera House of Frankfurt. The performance is rather bad. The male singer (Robert von

Scheidt) has

a fever, he often sings out of tune, the orchestra is not even close to the Budapest one, Jenő

Szenkár is

conducting, Judit: Else Gentner-Fischer. All the participants of The Wooden Prince are female.

15 May

- Bartok leaves Frankfurt.

16 May

- He arrives in Pozsony.

17 May

- In the morning he is doing the rounds of offices in regard to his mothers citizenship. - In the evening he has dinner at the Ede Kankovszkys (his wife’s brother-in-law).

According to his plan he arrives back in Budapest on 19 May concluding his tour of 10 weeks.

20 June - From Budapest he writes Mrs Fischer b. Stefánia

Szalay

in Nagyvárad that

he would also go there with pleasure to give concerts; such contracts are arranged by the newly established Union of Hungarian Artists. - He also writes Jenő

Hubay,

first about not wishing to take part in the committee preparing the 50-year Jubilee of the Music Institute of Higher Education [Translator s note: as the Music Academy has been officially called for many decades], due to differences of principle with some of the committee members; then he asks for the piano in his classroom to be repaired.

24 June - He writes M. Calvocoressi

in

London: “the Frankfurt performance was very bad”.

8 July - He writes István

Thomán recommending

Ödön

Hendel.

9 July - He writes Mrs Milch b. Etelka

Freund

that his Salzburg performance will be held on 9 August and he already got tickets for them. (The concert was actually held on 7 August.)

18 July - In his letter to Universal Edition he complains about their last settling of accounts.

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