Concerto for Orchestra

In the spring of 1943 Bartók was in hospital in New York, seriously ill and seriously impoverished. He had written nothing new since he had arrived in the United States, more or less as a refugee, in 1940 and he was convinced he never would: “Under no circumstances will I ever write any new work,” he had told his wife. Then Serge Koussevitsky came to see him with a commission for a new score for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and a cheque for $500 from the Koussevitsky Foundation as a first half-payment. Within a few months he was out of hospital, convalescing at Saranac Lake and writing his Concerto for Orchestra.

The programme note he wrote for the first performance of the Concerto for Orchestra in Boston in December 1944 is a touching indication of the how closely the gradual improvement in his health was linked with the progress of the composition: “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 second movement stands apart from that emotional progression only because of Bartók’s natural inclination to construct in “arch” form - in this case a central slow movement with a scherzo on each side of it and matching quick movements at the beginning and the end.

Bartók also described the work as “symphony-like” with two movements, the first and the fifth, “written in a more or less regular sonata form.” Before the main Allegro vivace section of the first movement, however, there is an Andante introduction which is not only highly atmospheric but also structurally crucial to the whole work, above all in its presentation of the rising and falling fourths and seconds in the cellos and basses and the four-note motif with the semitone inflection first heard on a solo flute and later on trumpets.

It is from the first of those motifs that, after an accelerando, the opening theme of the Allegro vivace emerges on violins in F minor. This, with a vigorous variant for trombone, is Bartók’s equivalent of a first subject. The second subject, based on the four-note motif from the Introduzione, is a Tranquillo oboe melody in B minor. The main themes pass through various developments, including a Tranquillo version of the first theme on clarinets and a splendid brass fugato on the trombone variant. But, because of the composer’s natural tendency towards arch from rather than regular sonata form, the second subject is recapitulated before the first, with the result that the beginning of the movement is reflected in the end.

Bartók explained the title of the Concerto for Orchestra by referring to its “tendency to treat the single orchestral instruments in a concertante or soloist manner…especially in the second movement, in which the pairs of instruments appear consecutively with brilliant passages.” So in this “game of couples” the bassoons appear first in sixths, then the oboes in thirds, the clarinets in sevenths, the flutes in fifths and the muted trumpets in satirical sevenths, each pair of instruments with its own tune. There is a brief middle section, in the form of a chorale for two different brass quintets, followed by a very much elaborated version of the first section.

The Elegia begins with the theme that opened the work. Pools of tears (or so it seems by analogy with a similar passage in Duke Bluebeard’s Castle) are reflected in harp glissandos and woodwind arpeggios. High above them is a plangent oboe melody later elaborated by the piccolo. The second main theme, passionately uttered by violins and clarinets with fierce trumpet interjections, is obviously derived from the four-note motif of the Introduzione. As in the first movement, the material is developed and the form is arched by recapitulating the second theme first. But the end of the movement is by no means as desolate as the beginning.

It is an indication of how cheerful Bartók must have been feeling by the time he got to the fourth movement of the Concerto for Orchestra, the Intermezzo interrotto, that he was able to risk a satirical stab at Shostakovich who, as he knew, was Koussevitsky’s “idol” among contemporary composers. The first part of the Intermezzo is a kind of serenade to Hungary based on two main themes - one a charming, rhythmically intriguing folk dance introduced by oboe, the other a rhapsodic melody on violas which is actually derived from an operetta melody by Zsigmond Vincze, “You are lovely, you are beautiful, Hungary.” It is rudely interrupted, however, by a parodied version of a significant theme from Shostakovich’s “Leningrad” Symphony. This wicked identification of the Shostakovich theme with a popular number from The Merry Widow is greeted with derision from the brass and peals of laughter from the woodwind. The serenade is resumed and the Intermezzo ends with a flute cadenza as sensitive as the interruption was rowdy.

The Pesante horn call at the beginning of the last movement is immediately brushed aside by the Presto activity of the strings but not forgotten. When the moto perpetuo energy can be sustained no longer the horn theme returns, first on second bassoon, then in a fugato, and then in a romantic transformation on the flute. Later, when the Presto activity begins again, an inverted variant is superimposed by a trumpet over the restless semiquavers in the strings. In this more racy form it becomes the subject of a marvellously inventive, contrapuntal central episode and - after an even quicker Presto beginning with whispers on the bridge of the string instruments and gradually reaching a fortissimo climax - it makes a final and expansively triumphant appearance in the coda.

Gerald Larner©