Szekely and Bartok: The Story of a Friendship

Violinist Zoltan Szekely, now 90, has lived through nearly a century of musical history. Beginning as a concert violinist in his native Hungary, he quickly became widely known in Europe. He commissioned Bela Bartok's much-loved Violin Concerto (actually his second; the composer refused to acknowledge his first) and was a founding member and leader of the Hungarian String Quartet, widely admired in Europe for 35 years for its playing of Bartok and Beethoven (the group gave the first performance of Bartok's fifth and commissioned his sixth, quartets). Szekely, married to a Dutch woman, was trapped by the Nazis in Holland during the war, later had to rebuild his, and the quartet's, career. After it disbanded in 1972, he ended up comfortably ensconced as a teacher at the Banff Center in Canada. Canadian cellist/professor Kenneson tells his story thoroughly, but with a wealth of often superfluous detail and a lack of inflection. The title is also somewhat misleading. Bartok certainly figures; there are previously unpublished letters by him and interesting glimpses of him at work, but the book is mostly about Szekely and the quartet, and therefore of comparatively limited general interest. Discography and photos not seen by PW. (0ct.)