Overture Magazine: 2017-2018 Season January-February 2018 | Page 26

TCHAIKOVSKY PIANO CONCERTO NO. 1
quick-tempo dances in duple or two-beat
rhythm. But the fourth, “Hornpipe
Dance,” is in slow 3/4 time and features
a haunting violin solo.
CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA
Béla Bartók
As Fascism swept over Europe on the eve
of World War II, many of the continent’s
leading musicians fled, either to save their
lives or for reasons of conscience. Béla
Bartók was one of the latter: he despised
the Nazis and everything they stood for.
His was a painful choice, for spiritually
and artistically he drew all his nourishment
from his native land; leaving Hungary for
America in late 1940 was a bitter exile from
which he never recovered.
The five years Bartók spent in the United
States before succumbing to leukemia
at age 64 were tormented by illness,
financial insecurity and anxiety about the
war. For two years, he wrote nothing of
importance and claimed he no longer had
any desire to compose. In 1943, his fellow
Hungarian émigrés, conductor Fritz Reiner
and violinist Joseph Szigeti, grew anxious
about his plight and prevailed upon Serge
Koussevitzky, music director of the Boston
Symphony Orchestra and a champion of
new music, to commission a work from
him. But they urged the maestro to be
careful in his approach, for Bartók would
absolutely refuse if he thought this were
an act of charity. Koussevitzky visited
the ailing composer in the hospital and
offered him $1,000 to write what was
to become his most popular work—the
Concerto for Orchestra.
The commission proved to be a
miraculous tonic both for Bartók’s health
and his creativity. Leaving the hospital
for Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks, he
composed the Concerto for Orchestra
between August and October 1943. More
commissions poured in, and Bartók’s
creative drought was over. The concerto’s
premiere by Koussevitzky and the Boston
Symphony Orchestra on December 1, 1944
was a triumph, and its brilliant writing and
greater accessibility finally made Bartók a
popular composer.
24
OV E R T U R E / BSOmusic.org
The BSO
As an introduction to the work, 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
lugubrious death-song of the third, to
the life assertion of the last one.” Instead
of writing a concerto that showed off the
abilities of a soloist, Bartók displayed the
virtuosity of a whole orchestra. Its five
movements center on a tragic “Elegia,”
and its finale is a celebratory Hungarian
round dance.
Pay special attention to the first
movement’s slow introduction, for it
previews the bitter twisting theme—in
flutes and muted trumpets, then loudly
in the strings—that will later reappear in
the third-movement “Elegia.” It accelerates
into the boldly outlined theme of the main
Allegro vivace section.
Seriousness is interrupted by the second
movement, “Game of Pairs,” in which
duos of bassoons, oboes, clarinets, flutes
and muted trumpets present five wry little
dances to the dry accompaniment of a side
drum. After a serene brass chorale, the pairs
return with elaborations of the dances.
The “Elegia” returns to the tragic
mood and music of the first movement’s
introduction. Surrounding the thematic
core are passages of what Bartók
called “night music”: eerie swirls of
woodwinds and strings with oboe and
piccolo bird cries.
The fourth-movement “Intermezzo”
alternates two folk-like themes: a
chirpy one led by solo oboe and a
swooning romantic one for violas and
strings. Midway through comes a rude
interruption: the endlessly repeated march
theme from Shostakovich’s Seventh
Symphony, which had recently become
a worldwide hit. The mad tempo and
raspberries blown by the brass leave no
doubt about Bartók’s dislike of this piece!
With his blazing finale, Bartók
achieves “life-assertion” with a high-
speed round dance. Here the string’s
virtuosity is demonstrated in their
wild perpetual-motion playing, while
the brass rejoice in some of the most
intricate fugal writing the composer ever
created. Wrestling with cancer during
the bleakest days of the war, Bartók
showed a heroic faith by affirming the
ultimate triumph of life and creativity.
Instrumentation: Three flutes including
piccolo, three oboes including English horn,
three clarinets including bass clarinet, three
bassoons including contrabassoon, four horns,
three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani,
percussion, two harps and strings.
PIANO CONCERTO NO. 1
IN B-FLAT MINOR
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Born in Votkinsk, Russia, May 7, 1840; died in
St. Petersburg, Russia, November 6, 1893
If one had to pick a work that epitomizes
the Romantic piano concerto, it would