Concerto for Orchestra (Bart�k)

It was written in response to a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation (run by the conductor Serge Koussevitzky[?]) following Bart�k's move to the United States from his native Hungary from where he had fled because of World War II. It has been speculated that Bart�k's previous work, the String Quartet No. 6 (1939), may well have been his last were it not for this commission, which sparked a small number of other compositions, including the Sonata for solo violin[?] and the Piano Concerto No. 3[?].

The piece was written in 1943, the score being inscribed "15 August - 8 October 1943". It was premiered on December 1, 1944, in Boston, Massachusetts by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitzky[?]. It was a great success, and has been regularly performed since.

Bart�k revised the piece in February 1945, the biggest change coming in the last movement, where he wrote a longer ending. Both verions of the ending were published, and both versions are performed today.

The piece is in five movements:

1. Introduzione - a slow and mysterious introduction gives way to an allegro with numerous fugal passages.
2. Giuoco delle coppie (Game of pairs) - this movement prominently features the side drum which taps out a rhythm at the beginning and end of the movement. In between, pairs of wind instruments play short passages. In each passage a different interval separates the pair - bassoons are a minor sixth apart, oboes are in thirds, clarinets in sevenths, flutes in fifths and trumpets in seconds.
3. Elegia - a slow movement, typical of Bart�k's so-called "night music".
4. Intermezzo interrotto (Interrupted intermezzo) - a flowing melody in with chaning time signatures is interrupted by a brash parody of the repeated theme from Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7[?] featuring glissandi on the trombones and "laughing" woodwinds.
5. Finale - marked presto (fast), this is in parts a perpetuum mobile.

This is the best known of a number of pieces to have the apparently contradictory title Concerto for Orchestra. Bart�k said that he called the piece a concerto rather than a symphony because of the way the instruments are treated in a solistic and virtuosic way.