Piano Concerto No. 3 in E Major

In 1945 Bartók had been suffering from leukaemia for several years. Suspecting that his illness might now be terminal, he decided to compose a concerto for his pianist wife, Ditta Pásztory-Bartók, to help her professional career during her widowhood. When he died in New York on 26 September 1945, he had finished his Piano Concerto No. 3 except for the end of the finale; this was completed from Bartók’s sketches by his former pupil and fellow Hungarian Tibor Serly, who was also living and working in New York. Compared to Bartók’s fiercely modernist first and second piano concertos, Piano Concerto No. 3 is very different: The music’s idiom is sparer and simpler, and the level of dissonance much lower. The first movement’s emphasis on winsome melody is balanced by the finale’s genial dance rhythms. Between them comes a slow movement marked “Adagio religioso”, with a serene, chorale-like opening and conclusion offset by the busily twittering nature sounds of the central section.