An Evening in the Village was composed in 1908 as no. 5 of the Ten Easy Piano Pieces. It has become one of Bartók's favorite works, which the composer himself was fond of playing at recitals. As he explained in an American interview, it was ''an original composition that is ... with themes of my own invention but ... the themes are in the style of the Hungarian-Transylvanian folk tunes. There are two themes. The first one is a parlando-rubato-rhythm and the second one is more in a dance-like rhy...