The first thing to
say is that it is a revelation to hear
these Bartók piano miniatures
played on the harpsichord. They work
wonderfully well, and before the purists
leap in, it is known, as Pierre Citron
confirms in the accompanying notes,
that Bartók specified that many
numbers from Mikrokosmos could
be played on the harpsichord.
He listed these (and most of them appear
in this recording), and put an ‘etc’
at the end, indicating that there were
certainly more.
Huguette Dreyfus is
a distinguished harpsichordist, well-known
for her concerts and recordings of Baroque
music for the instrument. She deserves
our special gratitude, though, for this
visionary expansion of the repertoire,
all the more remarkable as it was made
back in 1969.
To repeat the point
I made above, it really is remarkable
how well this music suits the instrument.
One simply does not miss the more subtle
nuances of the piano here, because the
music is predicated on rhythmic and
tonal patterns, and has a strict, rather
Neo-classical feel to it. This makes
‘expressive’ gradations of tone redundant
or even gross, and if one listens to
successful piano recordings of Mikrokosmos
(including for example Raymond Clarke’s
which I reviewed a week or two back),
they rigorously eschew a Romantic approach.
There are six books
of Mikrokosmos pieces in all,
but Dreyfus draws her repertoire for
this disc from Vols. 3-6, mainly because
the pieces in the first two volumes
are extremely short and simple. Mind
you, many of those recorded are also
very brief, which is why they have often
been grouped together on one track.
For example, track 1 consists of Triolets
(‘Triplets’) at 0:42, A trois
voix(‘In three parts’) at 0:28,
and Petite Etude (‘Little Study’)
at 0:29. As we progress through the
volumes, the pieces gradually become
more developed, and one is constantly
coming across tiny masterpieces. To
take two at random: ‘Chords together
and opposed’ (Accords joints et opposés)
on track 8 has terrific rhythmic
bite and crunch such as one could not
really create on the piano (and, interestingly,
could have come straight out of the
finale of Poulenc’s Concert champêtre,
written a few years earlier in 1929).
Then track 12 contains as its second
item the unforgettable ‘From the Diary
of a Fly’ (Ce que la mouche raconte),
which buzzes more amazingly than ever
in this harpsichord version. Dreyfus
changes registration very sparingly
and discreetly, but when she does so
the musical effect is undoubtedly enhanced.
A couple of small quibbles;
could not Harmonia Mundi have indexed
each individual number separately? When
there are many as five pieces (admittedly
all very brief) on a single track, it
can make finding any one piece very
difficult and fiddly to pin down. Secondly,
why give translations of the booklet
notes but fail to translate the all-important
titles of the pieces (which are
given in French anyway rather than their
original Hungarian)?
Nevertheless, quite
small things these, for this is a fascinating
and unique issue which I have enormously
enjoyed listening to.
Gwyn Parry-Jones
Huguette Dreyfus, harpsichord 
