Extended Program Note: Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra

Following is an extended version of the program note for Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra, which the Minnesota Orchestra performs at concerts on September 26 and 27, 2025, conducted by Thomas Søndergård.

BÉLA BARTÓK
Born: March 25, 1881, Sânnicolau Mare, Romania
Died: September 26, 1945, New York City

Concerto for Orchestra
Premiered: December 1, 1944

Béla Bartók and his wife Ditta fled to the United States in October 1940 to escape World War II and the Nazi domination of Hungary, but their hopes for a new life in America were quickly shattered. Wartime America had little interest in Bartók or his music, and the couple soon found themselves living in near poverty. Then came catastrophe: in the spring of 1942 Bartók’s health failed. By the following spring his weight had dropped to 87 pounds, and he had to be hospitalized. Bartók fell into a depression, convinced that he would neither recover nor compose again.

TRANSFORMED BY A COMMISSION

At this point, Bartók’s friends rallied around him—and very discreetly too, since the fiercely proud composer would never accept anything that savored of charity. Fritz Reiner and Joseph Szigeti convinced Serge Koussevitzky to ask for a new work from the ailing composer, and the conductor visited Bartók’s hospital room in New York City to tell him that the Koussevitzky Foundation had commissioned an orchestral work for which it would pay $1,000. Bartók refused. He believed that he could never complete such a work, but Koussevitzky gave Bartók a check for $500 and insisted that the money was his whether he finished it or not. The visit had a transforming effect: soon Bartók was well enough to travel to Saranac Lake in upstate New York, where he spent the summer.

Once he started on his new commission, Bartók worked fast—beginning on August 15, 1943, and completing the score eight weeks later. Koussevitsky conducted the Concerto for Orchestra in its first performance, by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, on December 1, 1944. It was an instant success, and Bartók reported that Koussevitzky called it “the best orchestra piece of the last 25 years.”

MUSIC OF STRENGTH AND BEAUTY

Bartók provided his own program note for the work’s premiere, stating in part: “The title of this symphony-like orchestral work is explained by its tendency to treat the single orchestral instruments in a concertante or soloistic manner. The ‘virtuoso’ treatment appears, for instance, in the fugato section of the development of the first movement (brass instruments), or in the perpetuum-mobile-like passage of the principal theme of the last movement (strings), and especially in the second movement, in which pairs of instruments consecutively appear with brilliant passages.”

This is music of strength, humanity, beauty and, not least, humor. Bartók’s own description may touch the secret of its emotional appeal: “The general mood of the work represents, apart from the jesting second movement, a gradual transition from the sternness of the first movement and the lugubrious death-song of the third, to the life-assertion of the last one.”

The five movements of the Concerto for Orchestra are in the beautifully symmetric arch form that Bartók sometimes employed. The outer movements, both in modified sonata form, anchor this arch, framing the two even-numbered movements, both of which have the character of scherzos (each is marked Allegretto). The central slow movement, which itself is in a symmetric ternary form, becomes the capstone to the arch.

introduzione. The music comes to life with a brooding introduction, and flutes and trumpets hint at theme-shapes that will return later. The movement takes wing at the Allegro vivace with a leaping subject (immediately inverted) for both violin sections, and further themes quickly follow: a second subject for solo trombone and a more intimate figure for solo oboe. As part of the development comes a resounding fugato for the concerto’s 11 brass players.

giuoco delle coppie (game of pairs). This charming movement should be understood as a scherzo in the literal meaning of the word: a “joke”—music for fun. A side drum sets the rhythm, and then pairs of woodwinds enter in turn to play a variation on the good-natured opening tune, first heard in the bassoons. Bartók varies the sound by having each “couple” play in different intervals: the bassoons are a sixth apart, the oboes a third, the clarinets a seventh, the flutes a fifth and, finally, the trumpets are a second apart. A noble brass chorale interrupts the fun, after which the woodwinds pick up the opening theme and resume their game.

elegia. At the center of the concerto lies this dark Andante, which Bartók called a “lugubrious death-song” and which is based in part on material first heard during the introduction to the first movement. It opens with an inversion of the concerto’s very beginning, which gives way to one of the finest examples of Bartók’s “night-music,” with a keening oboe accompanied by spooky swirls of sound. A great outburst from the violins, also derived from the very beginning, leads to the violas’ parlando declarations. The music winds its way back to the eerie nightsounds of the opening before vanishing with only two instruments playing—piccolo and timpani.

intermezzo interrotto (interrupted intermezzo). A sharper sense of humor emerges here. Bartók begins with a woodwind  tune whose shape and asymmetric meters suggest an Eastern European origin and continues with a glowing viola melody that must have had specific appeal for him: it is derived from an operetta tune by Zsigmond Vincze that originally set the words “You are lovely, you are beautiful, Hungary.” At the center of the movement comes the interruption.

During the war, Bartók had been dismayed by the attention paid to Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony, and he objected particularly to the obsessive ostinato theme Shostakovich associated with the Nazi invaders (which he had taken from Lehár’s The Merry Widow). Bartók quotes that tune in the solo clarinet, then savages it: he makes the orchestra “laugh” at the theme, which he treats to a series of sneering variations and finally lampoons with rude smears of sound. This has long been considered Bartók’s attack on Shostakovich, but is it possible that Lehár’s tune functions in exactly the same way for both Shostakovich and Bartók? For each, it is a symbol of the hated Nazis, it invades their own music, and it is thrown aside in an act of defiant nationalism. Once it is gone, Bartók returns—in one of the most beautiful moments in the concerto—to his “Hungarian” tune, now sung hauntingly by muted violins.

finale. The Finale begins with a fanfare for horns, and then the strings take off and fly: this is the perpetual motion Bartók mentioned in his note for the premiere. Beginning very quietly with the inside second violins, he soon invests this rush of energy with a slashing strength.

This movement is of a type Bartók had developed over the previous decade, the dance-finale, music of celebration driven by a wild energy. Yet it is a most disciplined energy, as much of the development is built on a series of fugues. Bartók is scrupulous in this score about giving every single section and player a moment of glory. Matters subside into a mysterious quiet, and from this misty murk the fugue theme suddenly blazes out in the brass. The Concerto for Orchestra ends with one of the most dazzling conclusions to any piece of Western classical music: the entire orchestra rips straight upward in a dizzying three-octave rush of sound.

Instrumentation: 3 flutes (1 doubling piccolo), 3 oboes (1 doubling English horn), 3 clarinets (1 doubling bass clarinet), 3 bassoons (1 doubling contrabassoon), 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, tam-tam, triangle, 2 harps and strings

PROGRAM NOTE BY ERIC BROMBERGER.