Divertimento

Thought I was done with Bees but no. The Lunch Hour Concert today featured music by Bach and Bela Bartok.

The first piece, by Bach, was his beautiful Concerto in D minor for two violins and strings. The violins were played by two talented young students, a tall dark-haired boy and a tall fair-haired girl. Everyone was enchanted by this.

The second piece, by Bela Bartok, was his Divertimento for Strings, which he had written while on holiday in Switzerland, having a break from the increasing Nazification of Hungary. Therefore I was not really expecting the music to be all about bees.

The first movement was an allegro, and began with a carefree drive through the fields on a summers day. The window was open, the sun was shining, and if there were any bees around they were outside the van. Perhaps there is a degree of hindsight in my perception of this.

It was during the second movement, the molto adagio, that I heard the fanning of bees wings, and the piercing agony of a sting, followed by the swimming heady feeling of someone who is falling into a swoon. This was when I realised that the music was really about someone getting stung by a bee.

Excited, I listened all the more carefully to the third movement. This movement was less about stinging and more about bees in general, and how they think of us humans, if they think of us at all.

There is a dancing theme, a strong unison theme, a rhapsodic solo, and then the dancing theme reappears upside down. Perhaps you are thinking this is rather technical, but I urge you to think of it in terms of bee behaviour.

Just before the end there is a comical pizzicato and a brief parody of cafe music. A flurry of triplets and a happy race to the end. That's bees, no doubt about it.

Quite a coincidence, given the subject of my last few blogs.