In the spring of 1941 the Hungarian prime minister Pál Teleki faced a terrible decision: aid Germany in the invasion of Yugoslavia or refuse and provoke the German invasion of Hungary. Even for the conservative Teleki the choice was impossible. He avoided it by putting a bullet through his head. Six months earlier, Béla Bartók, among the most important musicians in the history of Western music, had left his native Hungary for New York. While Bartók was incomparably more liberal than Teleki, and his exit far more peaceful, both men’s actions signaled escape as the only moral response to Hungary’s slide into fascism.
The decision to leave Hungary cemented Bartók’s posthumous reputation as an artist of high moral integrity. It also ushered in the most difficult period of his life. Dogged by poor health, financial uncertainty, and marital troubles, Bartók faced innumerable challenges during his self-imposed exile, which ended with his death from leukemia in New York in September 1945. Proudly self-sufficient in Budapest, his circumstances in New York forced him to seek help from a brilliant Hungarian lawyer turned successful American businessman, Victor Bator.
The result is a fascinating, twisted tale, at times akin to a Cold War thriller.
Carl Leafstedt’s well-researched study bears the subtitle The American Bartók Estate and Archives During the Cold War. While the topic may sound dry, it is anything but. Leafstedt digs deep into the backstory of Bator’s role in Bartók’s life and in Bartók’s affairs following his
