Béla Bartók
Concerto for Orchestra, Sz 116

Bartók’s most popular orchestral work – the last he was able to complete – has little in common with the ascetic, biting dissonance of his middle period. It is rich in catchy, folk-inspired themes, accessible in form and proportion, and follows a fundamentally romantic dramaturgy. According to Bartók’s own notes, its internal narrative leads “from the austerity of the first movement and the sombre death song of the third to the affirmation of life in the final one.” The striking treatment of the orchestra, which allows different instrumental groups to emerge in turn as soloists, makes the piece a true showpiece for any top-tier orchestra. Bartók’s return to a more tradition-bound compositional technique was sharply criticised after 1945. Yet his abandonment of a strictly “modern” stance was not solely for artistic reasons. In fact, his turn towards a more conservative style had been apparent for some time. As early as the late 1930s, the composer spoke of the need for an aspiration towards “inspired simplicity” in music. Having settled in exile in New York with his second wife in 1940, Bartók felt effectively boycotted by American orchestras; he considered his compositional career, as he once wrote, “more or less finished.”

Socially isolated, frequently ill, and largely destitute, he was approached in early 1943 by his prominent compatriots, the conductor Fritz Reiner and the violinist Joseph Szígeti, who secured him a commission from Serge Koussevitzky for a major orchestral work. Koussevitzky could hardly have expected that the composer – who had been in hospital for weeks – would actually be able to complete the piece. Contrary to all expectations, however, Bartók’s condition improved (he was not informed of his leukaemia diagnosis), and within two months he had finished the Concerto.

Bartók now combined the broad scope of the great symphonic epics of the late romantic era with the symmetrical bridge form that characterises some of his most significant works: two scherzo-like movements enclose a central slow movement, the expressive core of the piece, while two fast movements in sonata form provide an overarching framework. The Concerto for Orchestra serves as a summation of a life’s work: when Bartók allows neo-baroque fanfares and solemn brass fugati to meet the asymmetrical metres and complex modes of Balkan folk music, when he contrasts the boisterous humour of the second and fourth movements with the magical nocturnal atmosphere of the central Elegia, he maintains his typically austere, unsentimental tone, despite the polyglot mix of idioms.

At the height of World War II, clear messages were the order of the day: once again, symphonic music became a vehicle for collective ideals and emotions. More than one composer confused popularity with populism. Bartók viewed this with suspicion. In the fourth movement, Intermezzo interrotto, he weaves together the melody of “Da geh’ ich ins Maxim” from Franz Lehár’s operetta The Merry Widow with a fragment of the invasion theme from the opening movement of Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony. Broadcast worldwide in 1942, Shostakovich’s symphony had reached an audience of millions. Bartók composed the laughter at such banality directly into the music. It is heard for only a fleeting moment – yet within it, one senses the cruelty of an entire century.