Jessica Duchen introduces Bartók’s zestful, life-affirming work, his concerto for orchestra, written during his final exile in the US, and finds the best recordings
When Béla Bartók and his wife, the pianist Ditta Pásztory, left Hungary for the US in 1940, it was not a moment too soon.
The composer was horrified by the Hungarian government’s alignment with Nazi Germany, and his outspoken stance seemed increasingly likely to put his freedom, or his life, under threat. He had read the runes well. In 1944, Hitler’s forces overran the country.
In New York, the Bartóks had other things to contend with: irascible landlords, street noise that sometimes confined the sound-sensitive composer to the bathroom for some peace, and, of course, the indignity of having to start again with nothing but a back catalogue. Worse, he was suffering unexplained bouts of fever – the first sign of the leukaemia that would later kill him.
When did Bartók compose his Concerto for Orchestra?
Then, however, a deus ex machina appeared beside his hospital bed. Serge Koussevitzky, chief conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, had been persuaded by two of Bartók’s Hungarian colleagues, the violinist Josef Szigeti and the conductor Fritz Reiner, to approach him for a commission.
Bartók needed both the money and the vote of confidence. Retreating in August 1943 to the quiet surroundings of Saranac Lake, he set about writing a substantial, five-movement work and finished it in under two months. Rather than a symphony, he titled it Concerto for Orchestra.
The result was not only a masterpiece, but also has proved enduringly popular. For a composer with a reputation for difficult works, it offers unusual melodic charm; for one with a bent for darkness, it offsets its shadows with sunlit vitality, plus some outright comedy. This is a Hungarian in New York: it’s full of the rhythms of his native language but fizzes with relentless Big Apple energy and optimism, belying its composer’s fragile state of health.
As word spread of Bartók’s presence in the US, more commissions followed; by the time the Concerto was premiered on 1 December 1944, he had almost more work than he could handle. The performance was an immediate success, and Koussevitzky followed it with another a few weeks later, broadcast on the radio, plus a New York premiere in Carnegie Hall.
Bartók’s Indian summer also produced his Sonata for Solo Violin (for Yehudi Menuhin), his Piano Concerto No. 3 (for Ditta) and the Viola Concerto, which was unfinished when leukaemia caught up with him in September 1945. On his deathbed, he told his doctor that his greatest regret was leaving with a ‘full trunk’ of unwritten music.
Why did he call it Concerto for Orchestra?
The Concerto for Orchestra does what it says on the tin. It’s a five-movement showpiece for a top-notch orchestra, drawing out the instruments’ individual natures: whirling flutes, cygnety oboes and velvety brass, searing strings and, to close, the biggest party in town.
Bartók wrote: ‘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 title… is explained by its tendency to treat the single orchestral instruments in a concertant or soloistic manner.’
A guide to the music of Concerto for Orchestra
The introduction rises from a shadowy beginning, gathering pace until the full orchestra springs at last into a vigorous sonata-form allegro. The second movement, ‘Game [or ‘Presentation’] of Couples’, offers a procession of woodwind and brass in pairs and, later, larger groups – you need a very good third bassoon for this piece. The ‘Elegia’ is the work’s dark heart, where Bartók seems to release his full anguish; woodwind whirlpools almost recall the Lake of Tears in his opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle.
The ‘Intermezzo interotto’ is at first a richly melodic inspiration, its big viola theme based, according to Bartók, on the song ‘Hungary, Gracious and Beautiful’. But then the circus comes to town.
Bartók’s son Peter listened with his father to a broadcast of Shostakovich’s brand-new Symphony No. 7 and noticed his irritation at the infuriating march theme, repeated many times over. Here Bartók sends it up, complete with a woodwind giggle and possibly the biggest raspberry ever blown on a concert platform. The intermezzo then gives way to a finale of matchless vitality, the violin lines chasing each other in an exhilarating gallop across the open plains. Bartók revised the ending after the premiere; the first version ends with a downward plunge, the second with an upward rush of joy.
You need, for an ideal performance, both a technically faultless, magnificent ensemble and a conductor who fully identifies with Bartók’s idiom, with all its drama, detail, intensity and quirkiness. Various accounts hit my cutting room floor when an interesting interpretation had an orchestra that didn’t match up, or when a Rolls-Royce ensemble’s conductor sounded frankly too comfortable. There is not one dull second in this piece, and if a recording does not hold you enthralled throughout, it’s not doing its job.
The best recordings of Concerto for Orchestra
Iván Fischer (conductor)
Budapest Festival Orchestra
Philips 476 7255
The Budapest Festival Orchestra recorded the Concerto for Orchestra under its founder and chief conductor Iván Fischer in 2005, and if any contemporary account has it all, it’s this one. First, Fischer observes every detail in both letter and spirit, which is not always the case elsewhere. The opening is rivetingly mysterious, its gathering of forces brilliantly paced, the soft semiquaver entries in the brass offering Hungarian-style impetus on the first note (interestingly, some other Hungarian orchestras avoid this articulation, perhaps deliberately). The allegro shines and dances, while the brass playing is so radiant that that alone could almost have secured this version top billing.
The ‘Game of Couples’ – or ‘Presentation of Couples’, as conductor Georg Solti once spotted in the manuscript, complete with a faster metronome mark than was common – has a brisk India-rubber bounce, with vivid, characterful articulation that draws out the individual qualities of each instrument. The staccato oboes suit the players to a tee, while the brass chorale is smooth and suavely phrased.
The ‘Elegia’ opens with a chilling sense of tragedy, the oboe keening its lament; this is Bartók in his ‘night music’ mode, but with many new shadings of emotion. The strings let rip with a dug-in sound that is harsh as well as opulent, capturing the intense, impassioned atmosphere of this howl of darkness.
The ‘Intermezzo’ begins with a Brahmsy grace, plus gorgeous songfulness in the big tune, before the interruption delivers a level of slapstick that wouldn’t be out of place accompanying Laurel and Hardy. But the transition back to the melody’s muted iteration throws all the laughter into perspective; Fischer is attentive here to a satisfyingly subtle narrative. The finale is full of drive and glitter, with vividly marked articulation and the long crescendos perfectly paced.
Through Fischer’s balance of rhythm, irony and surprise, all the startling originality of the work comes bowling through. Transitions and gear-changes are elegantly worked, cinematically shifting the moods – you could envisage the murmur of a gathering crowd, trees in the wind by the Danube, or simply the heady, thrilling energy of the Hungarian folk music to which Bartók devoted so much of his life. And the recorded sound quality is clean as a whistle, unlike my other top choices (below), which are historical…
Georg Solti (conductor)
Decca 467 6862
Georg Solti and the LSO give the BFO a run for their money in a splendidly played recording from 1965 that has rightly become a classic.
Solti pulls no punches, but there’s subtlety too: for the first movement’s oboe-focused second subject, he offers a remarkable new colour, almost like a change of lighting. The second movement balances folksiness with classical poise; the ‘Elegia’ shivers with windswept nightmares, then evaporates as if awakening. After an excellent Shostakovich ham-up, the finale, even if on the scrambled side, is high on exhilaration.
Serge Koussevitzky (conductor)
Naxos 8.110105
The recording of the broadcast second performance, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Koussevitzky on 30 December 1944, is from the horse’s mouth, and uses the original ending. Koussevitzky’s interpretation is all about structural awareness and sense of line. In the relatively brisk ‘Elegia’, the plunging descents that punctuate the melody conjured, for me, a terrifying image of bombs falling on Budapest, in a way that no other account did. The finale is non-manic enough to let us hear it properly, and all the more exciting for that. Sound quality is dodgy, but it’s fascinating.
Fritz Reiner (conductor)
RCA G010003641701P
Fritz Reiner, who helped persuade Koussevitzky to commission the concerto, had a reputation for ferocity – and if you want scruff-of-the-neck playing, try his 1955 recording with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Recorded sound is unreliable, but the playing is sweet and bitter, alive in every note, the atmosphere at boiling point. For the ‘Intermezzo’, more charm would help, but the circus episode offers irresistibly high spirits. The finale is a wild dance, not a mad rush, and the amazing textural effects are the icing on the cake.
And one to avoid…
In the Berlin Philharmonic’s 1965 recording under Herbert von Karajan, the orchestra sounds beautifully plush, as always, but that isn’t the point in this piece. The strings are syrupy, the brass soporific and the bassoons lack sparkle. The ‘Elegia’ is not a searing, bomb-site lament, but virtually moans over being too fat for its silken suit. Indeed, the whole thing feels bizarrely narcissistic and lacking