Béla Bartók – the Marriage to Ditta Pásztory and His Ties with the Town of Lugoj
Turning point in European modern composition and a Brâncuși of music, born, just like György Ligeti and György Kurtág, on what is today Romanian soil, Béla Bartók (1881-1945) was no stranger to Banat audiences. On the contrary, he was a regular in his native Sânnicolau Mare (where he played in 1903, after just having graduated the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Budapest), in Timișoara (which he visited in 1906, 1924 – the same year of the memorable Bucharest concert partnership with George Enescu, when the two played his own Sonata no. 2 for violin and piano –, 1926 and 1936 – this was his last Romanian concert, sadly marked by unfortunate xenophobic outbursts in the local press), around Arad County (which he toured in 1924, 1926 and 1927) and in Lugoj (where he was in 1924). Moreover, he had certain sentimental ties with this latter, as his second wife Ditta Pásztory was related, on her mother’s side, to a family living in the town on the river Timiș.
Ditta (Edith) Pásztory (October 31, 1903, Rimaszombat, southern Slovakia – November 21, 1982, Budapest) was the daughter of Lugoj-born Gabriela-Iova, one of the seven children of Emil Petrovici, subprefect of Severin County during the Second World War. Career officer, he played a major role in isolation of the participants to the legionnaire’s rebellion of January 1941, when, due to his prestige and diplomatic talent, he convinced the combatants that had barricaded themselves in the Lugoj Prefecture to surrender, thus avoiding both bloodshed and the possible destruction of the historical building where in 1861 Emanuil Godju had sat as County Mayor. One of Ditta’s aunts, Aurelia Petrovici, stepmother to Lugoj actor Ştefan Tiberius Ciorogariu, studied the piano in Budapest with none other than Bartók. As for Ditta herself, she married the great composer in 1923 while she was his student in Budapest (the 22-year age difference didn’t matter for either of them), and he would dedicate his famous Mikrocosmos to their son Peter.
Bartók only gave a piano recital in Lugoj once. On March 24, 1924, at the Communal Theatre and on the invitation of lawyer, musician and professor Iosif Willer, he performed the programme he had given just days before in Timişoara (March 21) and in Oradea (March 22): three sonatas by Scarlatti, works by Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin and Debussy, as well as some of his own pieces (for details, see László, Francisc. Béla Bartók şi lumea noastră. Aşa cum a fost [Béla Bartók and Our World. As It Was]. Cluj-Napoca: Dacia, 1995, pp. 84-85). Willer declared (Muzica magazine, V, 5, 1955, pp. 48-9) that the composer had already been in Lugoj in November 1923, as his personal guest for a whole week following a Romanian tour. Bartók told him, Willer maintained, about Enescu’s phenomenal memory, which he had allegedly had the occasion to observe during a hypothetic concert by the Romanian composer in Lugoj in 1921. No other bibliographical source and no other document attests Enescu’s and Bartók’s presence in Lugoj in respectively 1921 and 1923, which is why we are rather reserved in trusting Willer’s statement, part of an article itself, for that matter, not free from other confusions and contradictions (it is possible, however, that Bartók came to Lugoj a number of times in private capacity, since Ditta’s grandparents lived there).
Another link between Bartók and the town of Lugoj is his close connection with Lugoj-based baritone Oszkár Kálmán (1887-1971), who would sing the title role in the premiere of Duke Bluebeard’s Castle in 1918 at the Royal Opera House in Budapest. The composer’s son from his first marriage (to Martha Ziegler), Béla Bartók III, recalls (Béla, Bartók. Apám életének krónikája [Chronicle of My Father’s Life]. Budapest: Zeneműkiadó) that the composer rehearsed at his home with Kálmán, and that on May 7 he accompanied him in an all-Kodály recital. As well, on November 4, 1923 and on April 22, 1930 Kálmán and Bartók performed his own and Kodály’s works at Vigadó Hall, on May 27, 1923 the two attended the festivities of the 25th anniversary of Ernő Osvát’s periodical Nyugat, and on May 18, 1930 the composer went a performance of Handel’s Esther to listen to Kálmán.
Constantin-Tufan STAN
Bibliographic References
Stan, Constantin-Tufan. Ditta Pásztory-Bartók – câteva precizări biografice [Ditta Pásztory-Bartók. Some Biographical Detail], in Banat, Lugoj, IX, 3 (99), 2012, p. 18.
Stan, Constantin-Tufan. Pianista Ditta Pásztory Bartók şi ascendenţa sa lugojeană [Pianist Ditta Pásztory-Bartók and her Lugoj Ancestry], in Coloana infinitului, Timişoara, XVIII, 95, 2015, p. 33.