It was Bence Szabolcsi who described the unique musical-dramatic language of Pelléas et Mélisande with the above quotation from 1925. This emblematic segment with its art nouveau imagery is the start of the third act. Combing her hair in the window of the tower room, Mélisande ‘extends' it down to the pining Pelléas. This exuberant and childish play between the two youngsters is interrupted by Golaud. But was it really just play that he saw?
Debussy premièred his opera in 1902. The following year, Béla Bartók dazzled the Viennese audience by performing Richard Strauss's tone poem Ein Heldenleben on the piano. The composition ignited Bartók's imagination as a conductor, and in 1903 he wrote his own heroic symphony portraying Lajos Kossuth, the towering figure from Hungarian history. By following a plot, the composition bore a great deal of resemblance to the work by Strauss that he had chosen as a model, while it was also not far removed in musical terms from the world of Ferenc Liszt. Strauss's composition, premièred in 1899, is a sort of turn-of-the-century bildungsroman. The self-quotations and the appearances of themes originating from earlier symphonic poems make the autobiographical character of the musical narration clear. The hero now feels responsible only for himself.

Presented by: Hungarian Radio Art Groups