Népdalszonatina - Sonatina Based on Hungarian Folksongs Ferenc Farkas

The “Sonatina based on Hungarian folk-songs”, written in 1955, is built on Hungarian folk-music, as the title suggests; it was written for Lajos Montag, an outstanding double-bassist at the National Opera. As the work does not employ playing techniques specially tailored to the bass alone, it can equally well be played by the cello or even bassoon, accompanied by piano.

Farkas wrote about this work of three miniature movements as follows: « As with all of the works in which I have used folksongs, I'm not content with just adding simple harmonies to them, but I create ambitious art-music forms using chamber-musical construction and counterpoint. So, for the exposition of themes of the first movement, they form the main, second and closing subjects, a development is dispensed with because on the one hand this is only a short sonata, and on the other hand the character of the folksongs wouldn't bear the development of the motifs. The second movement is a repeated lyrical melody with avarying accompaniment. The third movement is a rondo in which folksongs form the theme and two episodes.