Concert to celebrate Bela Bartok Tuesday
By NATHAN BROWN, Enterprise Staff WriterSARANAC LAKE - Historic Saranac Lake will host a summer concert at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Cobble Spring Farm on Fletcher Farm Road in Bloomingdale to celebrate the musical compositions of Bela Bartok.
Young musicians from the Meadowmount School of Music in Westport will present Bartok's "6th Quartet" and another quartet to be announced. They will visit the Bartok Cabin on Riverside Drive, where he spent the summer of 1945, in preparation for the concert, according to a prepared statement from Historic Saranac Lake.
There is a suggested donation of $20 to attend the concert to help support the cabin's maintenance, said Amy Catania of Historic Saranac Lake.
Bartok was one of the first ethnomusicologists. He studied the folk music of his native Hungary and the surrounding region, and incorporated elements of Eastern European folk music into his modern compositions. The summer of 1945 was the last of Bartok's life.
"He was sick with a form of leukemia," Catania said. "The doctors referred him here, hoping the mountain climate would help him."
While Bartok was here, he wrote two pieces, his "Third Piano Concerto" and "Viola Concerto."
The Meadowmount School is a seven-week summer school for accomplished young violinists, violists, cellists and pianists. The school has a number of distinguished alumni, including Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman.
The Bartok Cabin is privately owned. Historic Saranac Lake oversees the building and shows it to visitors by appointment.
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Contact Nathan Brown at 891-2600 ext. 26 or nbrown@adirondackdailyenterprise.com.
