10 Easy Pieces is a set of 11 solo piano pieces by the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. It was originally intended to be 11 pieces, but the composer withdrew one of the pieces, which was reallocated into his 14 Bagatelles. Thus the work obtained its current number ”10”. However, Bartók was still under contract to write 11, so he was obligated to append an extra “Dedication” to the beginning in order to fulfill the contract.

As a common choice for intermediate piano repertoire, the individual pieces are short and contain a lot of ostinati. Some pieces utilize the pentatonic scale while others are modal. Three of the pieces are directly based on folk songs. The sixth piece contains the folk tune “Snow has fallen on the market of Gödöllő” and the eighth piece’s melody comes from “It's told you can't be mine” (the song is also known as “She Was Digging a Well” in Slovak, and it was also used in the Czechoslovakian anthem “Lightning Over the Tatras”). The fifth, “Evening in Transylvania”, is one of the most popular pieces in the series, and is very frequently found in the pedagogical repertoire.


Date: 1908
Catalogue: Szőllősy 39, Béla Bartók 51

Order:
No. 0 - Dedication: 0:08
No. 1 - Peasant Song: 2:52
No. 2 - Frustration: 3:43
No. 3 - Dance of the Slovakian Boys: 5:06
No. 4 - Sostenuto: 6:04
No. 5 - Evening in Transylvania: 7:37
No. 6 - Hungarian Folksong: 10:34
No. 7 - Dawn: 11:25
No. 8 - Slovakian Folksong: 12:53
No. 9 - Finger Exercise: 14:04
No. 10 - Bear Dance: 15:32

Performer: Peter Frankl on piano

Note: This channel does not own the score or audio, and they are only used for non-commercial purposes.

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