Download Concert for Orchestra Music For Strings, Percussion and Celesta

Béla Bartók (1881-1945)
Concerto for Orchestra • Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta
The Hungarian composer Béla Bartók was born in 1881 in an area that now forms part
of Romania. His father, director of an agricultural college, was a keen amateur musician,
while it was from his mother that he received his early piano lessons. The death of his
father in 1889 led to a less settled existence, as his mother resumed work as a teacher,
eventually settling in the Slovak capital of Bratislava (the Hungarian Pozsony), where
Bartók passed his early adolescence, counting among his schoolmates the composer
Ernö Dohnányi. Offered the chance of musical training in Vienna, like Dohnányi he chose
instead Budapest, where he won a considerable reputation as a pianist, being appointed
to the teaching staff of the Academy of Music in 1907. At the same time he developed a
deep interest, shared with his compatriot Zoltán Kodály, in the folk music of his own and
adjacent countries, later extended as far as Anatolia, where he collaborated in research
with the Turkish composer Adnan Saygun.
BARTÓK:
Concert for Orchestra
Music For Strings,
Percussion and
Celesta
As a composer Bartók found acceptance much more difficult, particularly in his own
country, which was, in any case, beset by political troubles, when the brief post-war
left-wing government of Béla Kun was replaced by the reactionary régime of Admiral
Horthy. Meanwhile his reputation abroad grew, particularly among those with an interest
in contemporary music, and his success both as a pianist and as a composer, coupled
with dissatisfaction at the growing association between the Horthy government and
National Socialist Germany, led him in 1940 to emigrate to the United States.
In his last years, after briefly-held teaching appointments at Columbia and Harvard, Bartók
suffered from increasing ill health, and from poverty which the conditions of exile in war
time could do nothing to alleviate. He died in straitened circumstances in 1945, leaving
a new Viola Concerto incomplete and a Third Piano Concerto more nearly finished.
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The Concerto for Orchestra is among the composer’s last works. It was commissioned
by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation in 1943 in memory of the distinguished conductor
Sergey Koussevitzky’s wife Natalie and received its first performance by the Boston
Symphony Orchestra under Koussevitzky in December 1944. The work displays the
virtuoso talents of different sections of the orchestra, using devices of textural and
dynamic contrast, thus justifying its title.
Bartók himself wrote of the gradual transition of the work from the severity of the first
movement, to the third, with its song of death and to the finale with its reassertion of life.
The second movement varies this progress by treating pairs of instruments in different
harmonic intervals, a light-hearted interlude. Contrapuntal possibilities are explored in
the first movement, while the third has the air of a folk song, coupled with the mood
of night music that was part of the composer’s musical language. A fragment of the
Seventh Symphony of Shostakovich interrupts the Intermezzo, by way of parody, while
the last movement contrasts the perpetual motion of the violins with a fugal subject.
Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta was written in 1936, commissioned
by Paul Sacher, founder and conductor of the Basle Chamber Orchestra, whose patronage
has been so important in music of the twentieth century. It was first performed by the
orchestra under its conductor in Basle on 21st January 1937. The work is scored for
two groups of strings ranged either side of percussion instruments that include side
drum, snare drum, cymbals, tam-tam, bass drum, timpani and xylophone, with celesta,
harp and piano. The first of the four movements is opened by muted violas with a slow
chromatic melody, imitated by the violins on the right of the conductor and then by
both groups of cellos, followed by an upper violin part. Each entry is on alternate upper
or lower notes of the circle of fifths, a further example of the meticulous symmetry of
the work that has led to plausible theories of mathematical analysis, for which there
seems considerable justification. Here the successive entries lead to a central entry
on E flat, the climax of the movement, after which the process is reversed. The second
BARTÓK:
Concert for Orchestra
Music For Strings,
Percussion and
Celesta
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movement, thematically related to the seminal first movement theme, contrasts the two
string groups in its opening and is broadly in sonata form, with exposition, development
and final recapitulation. The Adagio, another example of the composer’s night music
mood, opens with xylophone and timpani, joined by tremolo cellos and double basses,
through the sound of which the first viola melody emerges. The movement is constructed
sectionally, each of the six sections in complex relationship with each other and with the
motifs that make up the opening theme of the whole work. The final movement, in form
essentially a rondo, introduced by two clear notes from the timpani, continues with a
pattern of pizzicato string chords, arpeggiated downwards, against which the second
group of strings introduce a Bulgarian folk dance rhythm with a melody derived from the
opening theme, here presented in ternary form. The movement ends stridently enough,
reaching a final consonant A major chord.
BARTÓK:
Concert for Orchestra
Music For Strings,
Percussion and
Celesta
Keith Anderson
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Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is internationally recognized as having achieved a
preeminent place among the world’s most important orchestras. Acclaimed for its pursuit
of artistic excellence, the BSO has attracted a devoted national and international following
while maintaining deep bonds throughout Maryland with innovative education and
community outreach initiatives. The BSO made musical history in September 2007, when
Marin Alsop led her inaugural concerts as the Orchestra’s twelfth music director, making
her the first woman to head a major American orchestra. The BSO has achieved critical
acclaim for its recording albums. In August 2009 the orchestra and Marin Alsop released
Bernstein’s Mass, which rose to number six on the Classical Billboard Charts and received
a 2009 GRAMMY® nomination for Best Classical Album. For more than eighty years,
the BSO has maintained a vibrant educational presence throughout Maryland. The 20122013 season marks the fifth year of OrchKids, a year-round program that provides music
education to Baltimore’s neediest youngsters at no cost. In addition to the Joseph Meyerhoff
Symphony Hall, where the
orchestra has performed for
29 years, the BSO is a founding
partner and the resident
orchestra at the Music Center
at Strathmore, just outside
of Washington, D.C. With its
opening in February 2005,
the BSO became the nation’s
only major orchestra with
year-round venues in two
metropolitan areas.
BARTÓK:
Concert for Orchestra
Music For Strings,
Percussion and
Celesta
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Marin Alsop
Hailed as one of the world’s leading
conductors for her artistic vision
and commitment to accessibility in
classical music, Marin Alsop made
history with her appointment as
the twelfth music director of the
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. With
her inaugural concerts in September
2007, she became the first woman
to head a major American orchestra.
She also holds the title of conductor
emeritus at the Bournemouth Symphony in the United Kingdom, where she served as
the principal conductor from 2002-2008, and is music director of the Cabrillo Festival of
Contemporary Music in California. Her most recent appointment as principal conductor of
the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra (OSESP), starting in 2012, marks another historic
appointment for her. In 2005, Marin Alsop was named a MacArthur Fellow, the first conductor
ever to receive this prestigious award. In 2007 she was honoured with a European Women
of Achievement Award, in 2008 she was inducted as a fellow into the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences and in 2009 Musical America named her Conductor of the Year. In
November 2010 she was inducted into the Classical Music Hall of Fame. Marin Alsop is a
frequent guest conductor with the most distinguished orchestras around the world, including
the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, the London Symphony, London
Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Concertbegouw Orchestra, the Orchestra
of La Scala, the Tonhalle Orchestra and many others. In addition to her performance activities,
she is an active recording artist with award-winning cycles of Brahms, Barber and Dvořák.
BARTÓK:
Concert for Orchestra
Music For Strings,
Percussion and
Celesta
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BARTÓK:
Concert for Orchestra
Music For Strings, Percussion and Celesta
2xHD Mastering: René Laflamme
2xHD Executive Producer: André Perry
www.2xhd.com
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