Concerto for Orchestra (Bartók)


The Concerto for Orchestra, Sz. 116, BB 123, is a five-movement orchestral work composed by Béla Bartók in 1943. It is one of his best-known, most popular, and most accessible works.
The score is inscribed "15 August – 8 October 1943". It was premiered on December 1, 1944, at Symphony Hall, Boston, by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitzky. It was a great success and has been regularly performed since. Bartók revised the piece in February 1945.
Bartók's is perhaps the best-known of a number of pieces with the apparently contradictory title "Concerto for Orchestra". This is in contrast to the conventional concerto form, which features a solo instrument with orchestral accompaniment. Bartók said he called the piece a concerto rather than a symphony because of the way each section of instruments is treated in a soloistic and virtuosic way.

Composition

The work was written in response to a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation after Bartók moved to the United States from his native Hungary, which he had fled because of World War II. In 1943, while Bartók was in hospital suffering from what would later be discovered to be leukemia, he was visited by Koussevitzky, who wanted to inform him of the commission for him to write the work that became this concerto. It has been speculated that Bartók's previous work, the String Quartet No. 6, could well have been his last were it not for this commission. Bartók then wrote several other works afterwards, including his Sonata for Solo Violin and Piano Concerto No. 3.

Instrumentation

The piece is scored for the following instrumentation.
;Woodwinds:
;Brass:
;Percussion:
;Strings:

Musical analysis

The piece is in five movements:
Bartók makes extensive use of classical elements in the work; for instance, the first and fifth movements are in sonata-allegro form.
The work combines elements of Western art music and eastern European folk music, especially that of Hungary, and departs from standard tonality, often using non-traditional modes and artificial scales. Bartók extensively researched Eastern European and Balkan folk melodies, and their influence is felt throughout the work. For example, the second main theme of the first movement, as played by the first oboe, resembles a folk melody, with its narrow range and almost haphazard rhythm. The drone in the horns and strings also indicates folk influence.

I. Introduzione

The first movement, Introduzione, consists of a slow introduction, presenting the main material leading to an allegro with numerous fugato passages. The quick part is in sonata-allegro form.

II. Presentando le coppie

The second movement is called "Game of Pairs". Its main part has five sections, each thematically distinct from the others, with a different pair of instruments playing together in each. In each passage, a different interval separates the pair—bassoons are a minor sixth apart, oboes are in minor thirds, clarinets in minor sevenths, flutes in fifths, and muted trumpets in major seconds. The movement prominently features a side drum that taps out a rhythm at the beginning and end of this part. In between this section and a variation is a short brass chorale that to some listeners suggests a kind of marriage ceremony.
The published score titles the movement "Giuoco delle coppie" or "Game of the couples", but Bartók's manuscript had no title for this movement at the time the engraving-copy blueprint was made. At some later date, Bartók added the words "Presentando le coppie" or "Presentation of the couples" to the manuscript and the addition of this title was included in the list of corrections to be made to the score. In Bartók's file blueprint the final title is found, and because it is believed to have been the composer's later thought, it is retained in the revised edition of the score.
The original 1946 printed score also had an incorrect metronome marking for this movement. This was brought to light by Georg Solti as he was preparing to record the piece with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1980:
Despite Solti's assertion that thousands of earlier performances had been played at the wrong speed, both of Fritz Reiner's recordings—his 1946 recording with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and his 1955 recording with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra—use the faster tempo Solti later recommended. Reiner had known Bartók since 1905, when they were fellow students at the Budapest Academy; it was Reiner, along with Joseph Szigeti, who persuaded Serge Koussevitsky to commission the Concerto.

III. Elegia

The third movement, "Elegia", is another slow movement, typical of Bartók's so-called "night music". It revolves around three themes derived primarily from the first movement.

IV. Intermezzo interrotto

The fourth movement, "Intermezzo interrotto", consists of a flowing melody with changing time signatures, intermixed with a theme that quotes the song "Da geh' ich zu Maxim" from Franz Lehár's operetta The Merry Widow, which had recently also been referenced in the "invasion" theme of Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 "Leningrad". Whether Bartók was parodying Lehár, Shostakovich, or both has been hotly disputed, without conclusive evidence either way. The theme is itself interrupted by glissandi on the trombones and woodwinds.
\new Staff \with
\relative c'''

In this movement, the timpani are featured when the second theme is introduced, requiring 10 different pitches of the timpani over the course of 20 seconds. The general structure is "ABA–interruption–BA."

V. Finale

The fifth movement, marked presto, consists of a whirling perpetuum mobile main theme competing with fugato fireworks and folk melodies. It is in sonata-allegro form.

Recordings

The following are only a small selection of the numerous available recordings.

Piano reduction

In 1985, Bartók's son Peter Bartók discovered a manuscript of a piano reduction of the score in the large body of material left to him upon his father's death. This version had been prepared for rehearsals of a ballet interpretation of the Concerto, to be performed by the Ballet Theatre in New York. This performance never took place, and the piano score was shelved. Soon after the discovery of this manuscript, Peter Bartók asked the Hungarian pianist György Sándor to prepare the manuscript for publication and performance. The world premiere recording of this edited reduction was made by Sándor in 1987, on CBS Masterworks: the CD also includes piano versions of the Dance Suite, Sz. 77 and Petite Suite, Sz. 105, which was adapted from some of the 44 Violin Duos.