Curiously enough, it was Bartok who first got me interested in A.L. Lloyd, and Lloyd who first got me interested in Eastern European folkmusic. An old schoolmaster of mine once loaned me an LP of two of the Bartok string quartets. 2 and 4, if I recall. They were part of a 3 disc set and, in the days of autochangers, were pressed so that you could listen to all six quartets in sequence, only having to turn all three LPs over together.

I was dazzled by the exotic tapestry of tone and melody and rhythm and went on to explore the rest of Bartok's output; the other four quartets, the piano concertos, the Miraculous Mandarin, the violin sonatas, the sonata for two pianos and percussion. I also went on to explore many of the other great composers of the twentieth century. Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Debussy, Messiaen, Janacek.

When my University's Music Department advertised a lecture called Bartok as a Folklorist I went along and spent an enthralled hour and a half listening to Bert talking about Bartok's compositional techniques, his collecting work, his nationalism, his identification with peasant peoples, and his public anti-fascism. That last one went down very big with me even then. I knew of course that Bartok had collected folk songs and that they'd been a big influence on his work. But among orthodox scholars, these things get swept aside as unimportant side issues. It became plain to me that night that, if there had been no Hungarian peasantry and no Hungarian peasant music, there would have been no Bartok. At any rate, not as we know him.

I remember Bert made great play of the Cantata Profana, and the story of the nine splendid stags, a work which I hadn't previously heard. As short as it is, I now consider it to be one of Bartok's greatest masterpieces.

I was immensely impressed by Bert's erudition and his ability to communicate complicated theories simply. Talking to him afterwards, I learned more in five minutes about Indian music than I'd been able to fathom before or since, and I've since come to regard him as one of the great intellects of the twentieth century. Those were the days when he used to broadcast lectures on BBC radio. I particularly recall The Savage in the Concert Hall, about the influence which so called primitive music was exerting on various avant-garde composers, and I was struck by the parallels Bert was proposing with similar movements in European art.

I've always been puzzled though by popular conceptions of Bartok as a 'difficult' composer. For example, I recently heard a member of a string quartet apologise to an audience for presenting them with a work (Bartok's 5th quartet) which they might need to persevere with! It's true that Bartok uses a lot of strange devices and his Hungarian folk music influences may make his work sound unfamiliar. But as with learning to enjoy the work of any great artist, a little persistence can reap vast rewards.