In Yugoslav Mode (Béla Bartók)

My piano teacher Stuart Thyne was an authority on the music of the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, and he saw to it that Bartók’s music was an essential part of my diet from the earliest age.

Bartók wrote Mikrokosmos, a six‐volume course of graded piano pieces for young students. In Yugoslav Mode, written in imitation of Yugoslav bagpipes, is a very simple piece taken from Book 2. The cadence on which it ends may sound incomplete to Western European ears, but Bartók explains that it was a familiar ending in Yugoslav folk music.

I learned In Yugoslav Mode at the age of 8, and I made this recording when I was 10.