Concerto for Orchestra

The future looked bleak for Bartók when, having left his native Hungary in October 1940 (never to return), he then spent three years in the US researching folk music and unable to compose. A Koussevitzky Foundation commission reignited his creative urge, and he wrote the Concerto for Orchestra between August and October 1943. Symphonic in its scope, but with a concertante emphasis on individual instruments, the work also has a symmetrical five-movement design. It begins with an "Introduzione", whose purposeful interplay of the speculative and assertive leads to a decisive ending. There follows "Giuoco delle coppie" (“Game of the Couples”), in which pairs of bassoons, oboes, clarinets, flutes and trumpets each vary a genial theme, with trumpets and then horns intoning a solemn chorale-like melody before the “couples” resume. The central "Elegia" recalls the searching “night music” from the work’s opening, building to anguished climaxes before subsiding into tense silence. Contrast is abruptly provided by the "Intermezzo interrotto", its alternating humour and pathos interrupted by an uproarious take-off—whether of Léhar or Shostakovich is still debated. Starting at a headlong pace, the "Finale" takes in more expressive material, blazing fanfares for brass and combative fugal writing for strings before it reaches a defiant affirmation at the close. First heard in Boston on 1 December 1944, with Serge Koussevitzky conducting, it soon took its place among Bartók’s most popular and representative statements.