It is the duty of the fortunate few who were privileged to come under his influence, either as partners in chamber music or as pupils (or as conductors, when he played his concerti) to try to recapture and conserve memories of his “music-making”, as distinct from his essential destiny of music-creating. […] The instrument, whether his own or ours, kept its hold on him right to the last; it meant a great deal to him. […] When I say that “the instrument” (whether his own or ours) meant much to him, I am thinking of our rehearsals, of our talks together, of his interest in instrumental know-how, of his pleasure when (in Davos in the Summer of 1927) I jotted down for him some unorthodox, violinistic “possibilities”, harmonics, pizzicato effects and the like. […] And above all, I am thinking of his playing, of its nervous, sinuous, rhythmic resilience. Of the lyricism that he evoked in Evening in the Country, of the humor of his rubato in Un peu gris […]

(Joseph Szigeti, making music with Bartók, 1953)