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Béla Bartók's String Quartet No. 5
When members of the Pro Arte Quartet -- a group that Coolidge had championed for many years -- suggested commissioning a new work from Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (1881–1945), she readily took their advice. Written in 1934, in one month, Bartók's monumental String Quartet No. 5 was the only piece he composed that year aside from some orchestral arrangements of folksongs. It was premiered in the Coolidge Auditorium on April 8, 1935, by the Kolisch Quartet from Vienna. Bartók would later perform as pianist in the Coolidge Auditorium while on tour with violinist Joseph Szigeti (1892–1973) in the spring of 1940. By the end of the year, unstable war-time conditions in Hungary led Bartók and his wife to immigrate to the United States permanently. |