Concert for Viola and Orchestra (Bartók)

The Concert for Viola and Orchestra , Sz. 120, is a composition by Béla Bartók.

In January 1945, five years after his transfer to the United States to escape the horror of the war and the Nazi barbarism, Béla Bartók was still working on his Third concert for piano When he received the request from the Scottish violist William to write a concert for his tool. Despite the health already somewhat badly, the composer willingly adhered to the client’s request and began to put the first sketches of the future work on the pentagram. He was probably fascinated by the idea of ​​composing a demanding work for a tool like Viola who, except for few great contemporary composers such as Paul Hindemith and William Walton, was not taken very consideration, to the point of inducing the same primrose to define it as ” a retired tool “. Shortly after having accepted the request, Bartók procured the score of the Aroldo in Italy by Hector Berlioz; Perhaps it was his intention to take the work of the great French musician as a model in order to write a composition that had been somewhat from the classic concert for solo instrument and orchestra ^[first] .
In September, Bartók wrote to Primrosa to tell him that the concert for Viola had already been sketched: «The orchestral score is only to be written (the orchestration will be rather transparent), which is no more than a mechanical work [… ] If nothing happens, I will end it in five or six weeks and then I will be able to send you a copy of this score in the second fifteen of October and, a few weeks later one or more copies of the piano reduction » ^[2] .

Unfortunately, on September 26 Bartók went out to West Side Hospital of New York where he had been urgently hospitalized four days earlier because of the sudden aggravating his health. The concert for Viola was therefore unfinished. The arduous task of bringing the work to complete was assumed by a devoted pupil of Bartók, the Hungarian pianist Tibor Serly who had already completed the last 17 jokes of the Third concert for piano and orchestra .
Serly was able to start working on the score only in 1947, two years after the death of his teacher. On December 2, 1949, the concert for Viola was performed by the Minneapolis symphonic orchestra directed by Antal Doráti, with primrose in the role of soloist; The score as remodeled by Serly was published the following year ^[3] .

In the original Bartók manuscript, the part of the solo viola is written by the beginning in the end by the composer himself; Where Serly had to do almost everything alone is in the orchestration; It is curious, however, that in some parts where the composer had left certain annotations Serly did not use it; For example, in the introductory part of the concert by Viola we read the annotation Timp.; Although this part can be easily performed on eardrums in moderate time, Serly has inserted the pinched of cello and double bass in their place ^[3] .

In his work of carrying out the work, Serly articulated the concert as a virtuous work divided into three movements. Compared to the almost contemporary Third concert for piano , the one for Viola stands out above all for the serious and austere tone of the solo part (of which Bartók mainly uses the lower registers) which contrasts with the brightness and plane of the previous work. The theme, “incisive at the beginning, then of a pungent lyricism, sometimes imprinted with languid tenderness in the central movement, finally lively and country with its sparse refrains in the final, develops with a serene unit, no longer trying to create strong oppositions as in most of the other works ” ^[2] .

In the first movement ( Moderate – Slow speaking ) the Sonata form is treated freely, with some peculiarities such as the attack of the recovery entrusted to the flute and the horn, but not to the viola ^[first] ; The subsequent movement bears the indication Religious adage , affixed not by the author but from Serly perhaps by analogy with the second movement of the Third concert for piano . Massimo thousand observes how in each of the two halfway to the street “a more agitated episode opens, which constitutes a pathetic and exciting re -enactment of those thrills, those agitations and those riots of intense life that pulsed in the Room It is Quinto Quartetto , or in the Archi music, percussion and celesta . The episode is especially moving in Concert for Viola , which is generally a more painful nuance than the peaceful Piano concert . The solo instrument has come, with a kind of run -up, to a high lament long supported ( crying out , is indicated in the part); And under the repetitions of its simple, naked invocation, a tingling of sounds develops, a tree of arches, crossed by short flashes, timbre chills that flicker more or less acute, repeating the phenomenon of sound phosphorescence typical of the music of the night ” ^[4] .
From the adage it is pierced in the final (cheerful lively) with a rhythmically accentuated tail. This turned out with its theme in sixteenth that turns rounded continuously is one of the most marked characteristics of the orchestral language of Bartók inspired by the Hungarian popular folklore ^[first] .

According to Giacomo Manzoni, the Concert for Viola «In every sense there remains a page worthy of Bartók, which by lyrical relaxation and in the set of harmonious and melodic language can be compared to Third concert for piano » ^[5] .