Sonatina for piano was composed in 1915. In the work Bartók used five original Romanian instrumental folk dance melodies which he had recorded during his folk music collecting trips in Transylvania between 1910 and 1914. Movement I is based on two bagpipe melodies (ardeleana, joc) from Hunedoara and Bihor respectively, the melody of Bear dance had originally been played on violin and guitar, while the finale uses two violin melodies (a turcii, babaleuca) from Mureş and Torontal respectively. In a late radio interview Bartók said, ''Bear dance was played for me by a peasant violinist on the G and D strings, on the lower strings in order to have it more similar to a bear's voice.'' In 1931 Bartók orchestrated Sonatina with the title Dances of Transylvania.

In 2015 we are launching a series entitled Bartók Transcriptions for Music Students to mark the 70th anniversary of the composer’s death. This involves reissuing our tried publications, and publishing some further, new transcriptions that fulfill in every respect the strict aesthetic demands of the earlier ones. We trust these publications will allow us to introduce still more music students to the realm of one of the great geniuses of 20th-century music.