Concerto for Orchestra (Bartók)

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The Concerto for Orchestra Sz. 116, BB 127 is one of Béla Bartók's best known pieces, and one of his most popular and accessible.

It was written in response to a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation (run by the conductor Serge Koussevitzky) following Bartók's move to the United States from his native Hungary from where he had fled because of World War II. It has been speculated that Bartók's previous work, the String Quartet No. 6 (1939), could well have been his last were it not for this commission, which sparked a small number of other compositions, including the Sonata for solo violin and the Piano Concerto No. 3.

The piece was written in 1943, the score being inscribed "15 August - 8 October 1943". It was premiered on December 1, 1944, in Boston Symphony Hall by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitzky. It was a great success, and has been regularly performed since.

The piece is scored for 3 flutes (one doubling piccolo), 3 oboes (one doubling cor anglais), 3 clarinets (one doubling bass clarinet), 3 bassoons (one doubling contrabassoon), 4 horn, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, side drum, bass drum, cymbals, tam-tam, 2 harps and strings.

Bartók revised the piece in February 1945, the biggest change coming in the last movement, where he wrote a longer ending. Both versions of the ending were published, and both versions are performed today.

The piece is in five movements:

Introduzione: a slow and mysterious introduction gives way to an allegro with numerous fugal passages. This movement is in sonata allegro form.
Giuoco delle coppie (Game of the pairs) (but see note below): this movement prominently features the side drum which taps out a rhythm at the beginning and end of the movement. In between, pairs of wind instruments play short passages. In each passage a different interval separates the pair—bassoons are a minor sixth apart, oboes are in thirds, clarinets in sevenths, flutes in fifths and trumpets in seconds.
Elegia: a slow movement, typical of Bartók's so-called "night music".
Intermezzo interrotto (Interrupted intermezzo): a flowing melody with changing time signatures is interrupted by a banal theme, treated quite ironically, which is in part a parody of the march from Dmitri Shostakovich's "Leningrad" Symphony (No. 7). The banal theme is itself interrupted by "dismissing" glissandi on the trombones and "laughing" woodwinds. In this movement, the timpani "solo" when the second theme is first introduced requires 12 different pitches over the course of about a minute.
Finale: marked presto, in which a whirling perpetuum mobile main theme competes with fugato fireworks and folky tunes. This is also written in sonata allegro form.

The work features all kinds of compositional techniques blended into one, and it is arguably one of the most brilliantly orchestrated pieces of music ever written.

It is perhaps the best known of a number of pieces to have the apparently contradictory title Concerto for Orchestra. Bartók said that he called the piece a concerto rather than a symphony because of the way the instruments are treated in a soloistic and virtuosic way.

Note: While the printed score has the second movement as Giuoco delle coppie (Game of the pairs), Bartók's manuscript shows it as Presentando le coppie (Presentation of the pairs). The printed score also has an incorrect metronome marking for this movement. This was brought to light by Sir Georg Solti as he was preparing to record the Concerto for Orchestra and the Dance Suite. Solti writes:

When preparing these two works for the recording I was determined that the tempi should be exactly as Bartók wrote and this led me to some extraordinary discoveries, chief of which was in the second movement of the Concerto for Orchestra. The printed score gives crotchet equals 74, which is extremely slow, but I thought that I must follow what it says. When we rehearsed I could see that the musicians didn't like it at all and in the break the side drum player (who starts the movement with a solo) came to me and said "Maestro, my part is marked crotchet equals 94", which I thought must be a mistake, since none of the other parts have a tempo marking. The only way to check was to locate the manuscript and through the courtesy of the Library of Congress in Washington we obtained a copy of the relevant page, which not only clearly showed crotchet equals 94, but a tempo marking of "Allegro scherzando" (the printed score gives "Allegretto scherzando"). Furthermore Bartók headed it "Presentando le coppie", (Presentation of the pairs) not "Giuoco delle coppie", (Game of the pairs). I was most excited by this, because it becomes a quite different piece. The programme of the first performance in Boston clearly has the movement marked "Allegro scherzando" and the keeper of the Bartók archives was able to give us further conclusive evidence that the faster tempo must be correct. I have no doubt that thousands of performances, including my own up to now, have been given at the wrong speed!

- Liner notes from London LP LDR 71036, Bartók Concerto for Orchestra and Dance Suite, Sir Georg Solti, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, recorded January 1980