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Béla Bartók

The composition date given in the headnote is slightly misleading: yes, Bartók produced this effort in 1940, but it is an arrangement of the 1937 Sonata for 2 pianos and percussion. While for some time the chamber version may have been the preferred one, especially among critics, the orchestral rendition eventually became the more popular choice in concert halls and the recording studio.

Bartók had originally conceived the work for solo piano and percussion, but felt a second keyboard would supply sufficient sonic heft to provide the proper instrumental balances. Largely because of the work's success at its debut on January 16, 1938, the composer decided to arrange it for orchestra, changing relatively small portions of the piano and percussion scoring.

The concerto is cast in three movements, the first lasting around 13 or 14 minutes, about the length of the other two combined. The first movement opens mysteriously (Assai lento), the pianos introducing the cryptic, terse main theme, or motif. As the music builds via intervallic accumulation, there are explosions from the percussion, and after an imaginative march-like episode on the pianos the tempo changes to Allegro molto. The colors brighten here and a brilliant, rhythmic theme, growing from the opening motif, is given by the pianos, later to be played colorfully by the xylophone. A second theme of less-aggressive character appears, and there follows an imaginative and complex development section. In the latter part of the first movement a brilliant fugue is given, wherein the piano writing is quite virtuosic, hands going in opposite directions on the keyboards, notes filling the air with tension and momentum. A dramatic coda, itself roiling in tension, closes the movement with emphatic resolution.

The second movement is an elegy whose mesmerizing music, marked Lento ma non troppo, recalls the middle movement of the composer's Piano Concerto No. 1 (1926), also a percussion-laden affair. The middle section here breaks from the elegiac mood of the opening and closing with agitated music, offering fine contrast to the nostalgic main theme.

The third movement is a rondo, marked Allegro non troppo, that features two quite memorable themes. The first has an arched contour, rising and descending jovially on the keyboard, while the next one is presented emphatically by the xylophone, sounding humorous and intentionally stiff in its march-like manner. There is a brilliant but terse development of the main theme in a fugato episode, and the work ends with a subdued coda. This concerto has attained a measure of popularity, but still remains largely on the fringes of the repertory, owing in part to the two-piano scoring. Relatively few virtuosos from any period devote their time to such works.