Bela Bartók
Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion, and Orchestra
Though Bartók completed his concerto for two pianos, percussion, and orchestra in 1940, it is really an augmented version of his original sonata for two pianos and percussion, composed in 1937. The mid to late 1930’s were a productive time for the Hungarian-born composer. Not only did he complete several major works, including Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936), his second violin concerto (1938), and the Divertimento for Strings (1939), but in 1934 he achieved a professional goal he had long sought: he was given a full-time position as an ethnomusicologist at the Budapest Academy of Sciences. With fellow composer Zoltán Kodály, Bartók had the time and academic support to research and catalogue the thousands of Hungarian and Romanian folk songs he had been collecting since 1901. Though he and Kodály eventually had a falling-out over the method of categorization (a third system was ultimately used), by the time Bartók closed the collection in 1938 it had grown from 6,000 to 14,000 pieces, a fifth of which Bartók had collected himself.
His passion for folk music of all origins — Slovak, Romanian, Bulgarian, even Turkish — deeply affected Bartók’s compositional style, infusing it with asymmetrical, driving rhythms. At the same time, he had a great admiration for the polychromatic textures in the orchestral works of Richard Strauss. Both of these influences can be found in the concerto, with its unflaggingly creative variations in rhythm and texture.
Working on a commission from the Basel chapter of the International Society for Contemporary Music, Bartók conceived the original sonata as a work for solo piano and percussion, but quickly decided that two pianos were needed to balance the percussion. He and his wife, Ditta Pásztory, were the piano soloists at the work’s premiere in Basel on January 16, 1938. “The whole thing sounds quite unusual, but the Basel people like it anyway, and it had a tremendous success,” Bartók remarked afterward. This success motivated him to arrange the work for orchestra, finishing the concerto version in 1940. In October of the same year he finally abandoned Europe, where he could no longer find work as a performer: he refused to even seek engagements in Germany, while the Hungarian government often found his music unacceptable due to “inappropriate” themes.
It is not surprising that governments interested only in furthering a nostalgic form of nationalistic music found works like Bartók’s concerto inexplicable. Though it features folk-like tunes and some dancing rhythms (especially in the third movement), the piece is the furthest it could be from nostalgic! The first movement begins with an ominous Assai lento, with quiet figurations from the pianos against soft percussion quickly and shockingly broken by sudden loud cymbal crashes and trills and glissandi from the keyboards. A twisting, chromatic theme introduced by the pianos accelerates into a march-like episode, followed by the Allegro molto, with its short breathless phrases on keyboards and the xylophone. A brilliant fugue featuring virtuosic writing for the pianos ends the movement dramatically. The second movement, Lento, ma non troppo, provides an example of Bartók’s so-called “night music,” all darkness and mystery. Soft drum rolls counter a chromatic theme from the pianos. This builds to the ominous second theme, featuring looming octaves from one piano against an urgent, six-note motif from the other, emphasized by rattling xylophone. The movement subsides again into the opening, nocturnal atmosphere, ending with distant-sounding brass and winds growing to a brief climax. The mood shifts dramatically in the next movement, Allegro ma non troppo, a cheerful rondo featuring two themes: the jovial opening, briskly rising and falling on the keyboards, followed by a humorous, stiff march once again featuring the xylophone. As the movement builds in intensity, harmonies begin to range up and down chromatically, with even the tympani sounding a bit “woozy.” Yet as the piece grows toward the final climax, the music begins to fragment. Chords elongate into arpeggios, and soft trills from the woodwinds further break up the texture. The entire piece ends as it began, with the softest of beats on the drum.
November, 2002