Runtime: Approx. 38 minutes

Perhaps Bartok’s most beloved work, Concerto for Orchestra was produced at a very difficult time in the composer’s life. He was ill with what would eventually be diagnosed as leukemia, he and his wife had recently been forced to flee their home in Hungary from Nazi occupation, and, due to the ongoing war, paid commissions had become extremely rare. Finally, after a long period without writing, he received a commission from Serge Koussevitzky, Music Director of the Boston Symphony.

The title, Concerto for Orchestra, is used in only a few other works, all from 20th century composers. Here, Bartók treats the orchestra not only as a mechanism for carrying out tunes, but as an amalgam of different and excitingly colored instruments, each deserving to be highlighted for their own unique characteristics. He passes melodies around the group like a painter trying to incorporate every possible color. No instrument is restricted only to supportive roles, and nearly every sound possibility for each instrument is explored.

Despite Bartók’s rich and progressive use of the orchestra, the work is quite accessible. Bartók’s melodies are often inspired by folk music from his beloved Hungary and are infused with a spectrum of emotion perhaps only made possible by the unique circumstances of his life.

The piece is organized into a musical palindrome which centers around the striking third movement. In his program note from the premiere, Bartók described the central movement as a “death-song.” It is surrounded on either side by two scherzos, and then finally bookended by the more robust outer movements.

The first movement is typical of the orchestral form; after a slow introduction, Bartók embarks on a fast-paced, insistent theme which is then juxtaposed with a gentler second melody lead by the oboe.

For his second movement, “Game of Pairs,” Bartók marks Allegro scherzando, or literally translated, “cheerful, joking.” Here, the musical joke happens in the intervals between the pairs of instruments passing around the melody. He begins innocently enough with the bassoons stating the melody in sixths followed by the oboes in thirds—two harmonies which feel quite secure to most ears. But soon things start to get a bit off: two clarinets enter in sevenths, sounding a bit off-kilter, then flutes in fifths, an awkward and hollow harmony, and finally two muted trumpets in crunchy seconds—perhaps one of them is playing the wrong notes? A brass chorale intervenes, offering a moment’s respite from the gag, but soon enough the pairs return.

The fourth movement, “Interrupted Intermezzo,” gets up to even more mischief than the second. It begins with a wistful melody in the woodwinds, but the meter changes nearly every measure, lending it a limping, tipsy quality. As the strings enter, the tune expands into a broader, mournful theme, but the moment is fleeting, and the oboe quickly resumes its pensive motif. The first interruption comes in the form of a quotation lifted from Franz Lehár’s operetta, The Merry Widow. The clarinet enters with the whimsical melody accompanied by march-like off beats in the strings and begins to speed up, growing in confidence, but is again interrupted, this time by aggressive trills in the woodwinds followed by farcical exclamation from the trombones. For a few moments, the various themes compete for attention before the music is finally allowed to return to its melancholy woodwind songs—but The Merry Widow manages to get in one quick final word.

After a boisterous fanfare from the horns, the fifth and final movement takes off in a flurry of perpetual motion that builds to a triumphant theme led by regal calls in the trumpets. It veers off course only for a few moments to allow the woodwinds to explore a fugue on the theme presented by the horns but is urged back to its original course by the insistent brass in a grand restatement of their earlier melody.

Bartók’s own program notes stated that “the general mood of the work represents… 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…” Indeed, the writing of Concerto for Orchestra seemed to give the ailing composer renewed energy at the end of his life. Fortunately, he was able to attend the premiere just nine months before his death. “We went there for the rehearsals and performances,” Bartók wrote of the experience, “after having obtained the grudgingly granted permission of my doctor for this trip…The performance was excellent. Koussevitzky says it is the ‘best orchestra piece of the last 25 years’ (including the works of his idol, Shostakovich!).”