Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra

  • General Piece Details
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  • Status: Scheduled
    Music Category: Concerto
    Part of public repertoire? No
    Composer: Bartók, Béla
    Duration: 38m 00s
  • Notes for members
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  • The Concerto for Orchestra, Sz. 116, BB 123, is a five-movement orchestral work composed by Béla Bartók in 1943. It is one of his best-known, most popular, and most accessible works.[1]

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

    The work was written in response to a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation (run by the conductor Serge Koussevitzky) following Bartók's move to the United States from his native Hungary, which he had fled because of World War II.

    Bartók revised the piece in February 1945, the biggest change coming in the last movement, where he wrote a longer ending. Both versions of the ending were published, but the revised ending is almost universally performed.

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