In 1940 Bartók and his wife left their native Hungary and moved to America. He had wanted no truck with fascism/Nazism and his position in Budapest had become untenable. His music was not well known in the States, and so he eked out a living by working as an ethnomusicologist for Colombia University, engagements as a piano soloist and from the support of friends. Part of that support consisted of convincing a major American orchestra and its conductor to request a new work from the composer…
Concerto for Orchestra (1943)
The Concerto for Orchestra was written in 1943 in response to a commission from Serge Koussevitzky the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It’s one of the composer’s most approachable and popular works.
00:00 I. Introduzione. Andante non troppo – Allegro vivace
10:06 II. Gioco delle coppie. Allegro scherzando
16:57 III. Elegia. Andante non troppo
24:20 IV. Intermezzo interrotto. Allegretto
29:00 V. Finale. Pesante – Presto
Piano Concerto No. 3 (1945)
The Third Piano Concerto was written as a birthday present for Bartók’s wife, the pianist Ditta Pásztory-Bartók. She was 42 in October, 1945, by which time the composer – who had been ailing since his arrival in America with what was eventually diagnosed as leukaemia – had died. Despite this tragic background, the Third Concerto follows the trend of the Concerto for Orchestra in being an easily accessible, almost neo-classical piece:
0:05 – Allegretto;
8:17 – Adagio religioso;
17:42 – Allegro vivace
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The Art of Listening 