Twenty Minutes - Bartok and the Good Master

Before a performance of Bartok's Canatata Profana, the writer Meg Rosoff recalls The Good Master, a classic children's novel by the Hungarian-American writer Kate Seredy. Kate Seredy wrote The Good Master after she emigrated to America. A vivid evocation of life on the Hungarian plains at the beginning of the twentieth century, it is also a lament for the end of a traditional way of life which Bartok himself explores in his music. The writer Meg Rosoff loved the book as a child and remembers in particular the attractions of a simple, seasonal lifestyle - horse-riding, spinning and weaving, country fairs and gypsy dancing, cooking and feasting - to a girl such as herself, who grew up in the suburbs and shopped in supermarkets. Returning to the book as an adult, she finds new depths in it and new links with the powerful music of Bartok. Reader: Christine Kavanagh Producer: Beaty Rubens.