[2] According to the violinist Zoltán Székely, he and the composer met one day in 1928 and, after chatting for a time, Bartók suddenly announced that he had a surprise for him, and produced the manuscripts of the two rhapsodies, which no one else had previously seen.
[2] The first movement is in ternary form (ABA′, plus a coda), the main theme of which begins with a rising-scale violin melody heavily laden with Romani influences, including the characteristic dotted rhythms.
This is the only Hungarian melody used in either of the two rhapsodies, a Transylvanian fiddle tune called the Lament of Árvátfalva recorded by Béla Vikár and later transcribed by Bartók.
[7] The second movement is in "chain form", featuring a succession of five independent melodies with "no attempt whatever to create structure or integration"—apart from an overall accelerando.
The first, longer version brings back the main theme from the first movement, in the original G Lydian tonality, and finishes with a ten-bar, cadenza-like flourish.