Radiant lyricism, raucous humour and uproarious high spirits

Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra (1943)

Afew modern pieces manage to shake off the scary reputation of their composers and become popular favourites. The Concerto for

Orchestra by Béla Bartók is one. Composed when the composer was suffering from a mortal illness, it is full of nostalgia for his distant homeland of Hungary, which sometimes reaches a tragic depth. Twenty years beforehand, Bartók had achieved a fusion of modernism and folk melody that was as savagely dissonant as anything in Stravinsky. But by the Forties, he had mellowed, and the impression this late piece leaves behind is of radiant lyricism, raucous humour and uproarious high spirits. It glows, from start to finish.

Background

Like so many European musicians, Bartók and his wife Ditta had fled to the US to escape the Second World War raging in Europe. He eked out a living by working on Columbia University’s folk music collections, but became dangerously ill with leukaemia in February 1943.

While receiving treatment in a New York hospital, he was visited by the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s conductor, Serge Koussevitzky, who invited Bartók to compose a big piece in memory of his wife, who had died the year before. (Koussevitzky also arranged for Bartók to be treated with penicillin, the first time this new drug had been prescribed to a civilian.)

Bartók composed the concerto in a mere eight weeks while at a lakeside sanatorium in New York state. In a letter, he described the new piece as a symphony in five movements, in which the instruments would be treated in a soloistic way, rather than en masse.

Why it’s so great

There are so many reasons to love this piece. One is the amazingly refined colours of Bartók’s orchestration; another is the way the piece draws on Bartók’s vast experience as a collector of folk music. He draws on Hungarian, Romanian, Serbian and even Arab music to create a hugely sophisticated fusion of classical high art, modernist constructivism and peasant vigour. Most riveting of all is the music’s emotional journey, which passes from nostalgia to a still central point of tragedy, and then eventually to joyous affirmation.

What to listen out for

performance I discuss is given by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Andrés Orozco-estrada (youtube.com/ watch?v=pg26bmdvr9e).

1st movement: Introduzione (“Introduction”)

The Introduction actually begins with its own slow introduction. It takes shape gradually, rising out of the bass region with a twice-repeated phrase based on a Hungarian folk song of mourning, as well as an anguished melody at 2.43 that returns in the slow movement.

An acceleration leads to the main Allegro (“fast”) part of the Introduction. This is cast in the so-called “sonata form” that had been a staple of symphonies and concertos since Haydn’s day. First we hear a group of related melodies: a very assertive one at 3.37, then a second, more expansive one at 3.53. Listen out for the trombone idea at 4.25, which will be important later. At 4.43 comes a second group of melodies, of a very different, almost Arab-sounding melancholy. From 6.07, these ideas are developed, climaxing with the return of the trombone melody in a splendid brassy pile-up at 8.15. At 8.30, the opening melodies are brought back in the so-called “Recapitulation”, but in reverse order, with the “Arab” melody first.

2nd movement: Giuoco delle coppie (“Game of Couples”)

This is based on a simple idea: five pairs of wood instruments play a duet in turn (thus the title), the game preceded and rounded off by a sidedrum rhythm. The pairs are, in order: bassoons, oboes, clarinets, flutes and muted trumpets. Then comes a beautifully contrasting brass chorale, each phrase separated by the sidedrum, before the game repeats.

3rd movement: Elegia (“Elegy”)

This is a deeply tragic utterance, beginning at 17.17 with what sounds like a reprise of the quiet opening of the whole piece. This leads to a magical example of Bartók’s “night music” idiom, with a melancholy oboe melody and lonely bird calls. An impassioned melody at 19.11 and the return of the tragic melody from the slow introduction at 19.48 leads to the heart of the movement at 20.47, a speech-like melody similar in style to funeral songs of Transylvania. The fervent melody from the Introduction returns unexpectedly at 22.01, which reaches a climax and then dies away. The shadowy opening phrase in the cellos returns, then the night music and that lonely bird at 23.08.

4th movement: Intermezzo interrotto (“Interrupted Intermezzo”)

This sweetly gentle Intermezzo starts with a rhythmically lopsided, gently nostalgic melody on the oboe. At 25.49 comes a gorgeously sentimental melody, similarly off-kilter, richly orchestrated with harps. After a brief return of the oboe melody comes the “Interruption” at 26.54, a perky, banal little tune from clarinet, followed by a huge raspberry from the brass. This could be a parody of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, which Bartók is known to have despised, or possibly the aria Da geh’ ich zu Maxim from Lehar’s operetta The Merry Widow. The parody vanishes behind an orchestral shriek and tam-tam crash, after which the sentimental melody returns.

Emotional: Andrés Orozco-estrada with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra; Béla and Ditta Bartók

5th movement: Finale

After a bracing imitation of a Transylvanian shepherd’s horn call, we’re off into a riotous recreation of a Romanian gipsy dance band, with strumming violins. At 31.30, the opening horn call returns as a contrapuntal pile-up beginning on bassoon, leading eventually to a new horn-call-type melody on the trumpet at 32.34. This reappears in the violins, now seriously drunk, at 33.35. The music gathers energy through another contrapuntal pile-up at 34.52, leading to the “recapitulation” of the opening at 35.29. The peasant energy is unexpectedly dissipated through an astonishing cinematic “dissolve” at 36.53, creating a harmonic mist.

This clears slowly to reveal the second horn-call, now given a brassy apotheosis, before a reprise of the Romanian dance whirls us to the end.

Recommended recordings

Hungarian orchestras have a special sensitivity to Bartók’s rhythmic subtleties, and that gives an edge to the fabulous recording from conductor Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra on Philips.

But Pierre Boulez’s Grammy-awardwinning recording with the Chicago Symphony on Deutsche Grammophon is a strong contender, thanks to its riveting forensic clarity.

The piece draws on Bartók’s vast experience as a collector of folk music