Tales from the Stave

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Tales from the Stave: Bartok's Concerto For Orchestra

Bartok's Concerto For Orchestra

BBC Radio 4 - Tales from the Stave, Bartok's Concerto For Orchestra

A celebration through handwritten manuscript of Bela Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra.

The programme that celebrates classical music through the manuscripts on which it first saw the light of day is back in Washington DC to see Bartok's great Concerto for Orchestra.

Although a composer whose life and work is steeped in the folk traditions of his native Hungary, Bela Bartok's last great orchestral work was composed in the United States. The Concerto for Orchestra was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor Serge Koussevitzky. He got wind of the fact that Bartok, who came to the States at the start of the war, was struggling, both for income and health. They didn't know it at the time but he was later diagnosed with leukaemia. Koussevitzky visited him in hospital and asked for a piece for orchestra, $500 dollars now and $500 on completion. Bartok wasn't sure if he'd ever get it finished but the project sparked a new surge of energy and the new work was given its Boston debut in December 1944 with the composer in attendance.

Loras Schissel is the host at the Library of Congress as he and three players from Washington's National Symphony Orchestra explore a manuscript which is a favourite of professional American orchestras, combining as it does the wealth of European tradition with the energy Bartok managed to engender from his new US home. Laurel Bennert Ohlson is Associate Principal Horn, David Murray is a trombonist and Susan Stokdyk is the NSO librarian and former bassoon player.

As well as the neat and fiendishly difficult manuscript there's also Koussevitzky's conducting score with rehearsal directions given by the composer and letters describing the origins of the piece and the part played by Bartok's wife Ditta and his Hungarian friend, the violinist Josef Szegeti. But it's the music that takes centre stage with its wit, melancholy and famous Bronx Cheers! (Trombone glissandos which musicologists believe are a side-swipe at the popularity of Shostakovich at the time.)

The programme was recorded in February with the National Symphony Orchestra's plans for a Southeast Asian tour being cancelled for what appeared to be a limited outbreak of a new form of flu! 

Producer: Tom Alban

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