Update

Hello everyone,

I do not have much to report but my love of Bela Bartok's music has not waivered.

I will recommend some CD's of Bela's music and the allied folk music.

The Hungarian/Transylvanian music group "Muzsikas" have two CD'S devoted to folk music that would have been heard when Bela went on his folk music collecting in the Carpathian mountain regions of Hungary/Transylvania/Romania in the 1900's. Both CD's are called 'The Bartok Album' and were produced within about 4 years of each other. There are some orginal tracks of singers that Bela collected plus the comparsions between some of the violin music placed in the villages and the pieces that Bartok adapted (ie some of the 44 violin duos). Details about these albums can be found on Amazon Music at
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/artist/glance/-/36367/ref=pd_ap_sr/002-3428901-8107208

Also you may be lucky enough to find their CD'S for sale on eBay. I receive email alerts through eBay when items I am searching for come up for sale. You will need to bid for the items, but you can be very lucky in that you will only pay a fraction of the price that the CD'S were first sold.
I have had to import the CDs from the US and England but sometimes you can find CD's available in Australia. I recently purchased Bartok's 3 Piano Concertos from an Australian seller.

Also, I will recommend two Australian music groups that play authenic Hungarian/Transylvanian music. The first group The Transylvaniacs do giggs on a regular basis in the Inner Sydney and South coast areas of NSW. Th group also attend various folk festivals in Australia. I actually saw them perform at The Side on Cafe in Annandale. I was sitting up close to them and felt and heard the music. It was a fantastic night. Their Website is at http://members.optusnet.com.au/~castopic/

The other group is Vardos, who are based in Melbourne. So far I have only heard snippets of their 2 CD's. What I have heard is absolutely wonderful. They have captured the authenic sounds of Hungary, Romania and Transylvania. Their webste is at
http://www.vardos.com.au/

This is all for today. I hope to add more as time goes by.