Bartok: Concerto No. 3

Piano Concerto No. 3 (1945)

Bela Bartok
(1881-1945)

Like such contemporaries as Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Hindemith, Milhaud, Kurt Weill and other European composers, Bela Bartok found his way to the United States with the onset of World War II. This cultural diaspora would prove to be a powerful catalyst in the transformation of of America from a rather provincial musical culture to one of great independence and self-confidence. Most of these composers were warmly received and soon found their footing in new surroundings. Some (Schoenberg, Hindemith, Milhaud) found financial security in university teaching, others (Stravinsky, Weill) were welcomed in the “musical marketplace.” Bela Bartok, believing that musical composition could not be taught, refused most offers for academic positions. As a composer, Bartok was not widely known by Americans, and his music was thought to be quite “difficult.” When the administrators of the New York Philharmonic learned that Fritz Reiner planned to program Bartok’s audience-friendly Second Violin Concerto, he was urged to drop the work. (Reiner flatly refused – and the concerto was greeted with icy hostility.) Bartok, a brilliant pianist, toured for a while, giving recitals in places as remote as Provo, Utah! His health failing, Bartok appeared in public less and less…the Steinway Company eventually informed him that the instrument which had been put at his disposal would have to be reclaimed. The final compositions were in many cases commissions secretly arranged by friends of the composer who feared for his well-being. There were successes, as well, especially the 1944 premiere of the Concerto for Orchestra by the Boston Symphony under Koussevitsky---the occasion of Bartok’s last public appearance. Stricken with leukemia, the composer went into decline and died on September 26, 1945, leaving behind several unfinished compositions. One of these (all but completed) was the Third Piano Concerto, composed in secret as a performing vehicle for Bartok’s wife, the pianist, Ditta Pasztory-Bartok, with the aim of helping to provide a measure of financial security for her. In fact she never publicly performed the work, which was introduced on 8 February 1946 by Bartok’s pupil Gyorgy Sandor, with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy.

Bartok’s two earlier piano concerti (written in 1926 and 1931 respectively) belong to a period of his most tough, harmonically challenging work, memorable for the composer’s use of the solo instrument as a percussion instrument, and for a wide range of subtle and atmospheric textures. Like other works written during the last decade of Bartok’s life (which have always been his most popular compositions), the Third Concerto,exhibits a tone of gentleness and lyrical expressiveness which has made it one of the most-played 20^th century concerti, along with comparable works by Prokofiev, Ravel and Gershwin.

Throughout his career Bartok remained a fundamentally tonal composer, loyal to the musical structures inherited from the Classical masters---he is said to have kept the score of Beethoven’s string quartets by his bedside. This strong bond with musical tradition is especially pronounced in the compositions written in the final stage of his creative life, perhaps never more so than in the Third Concerto. The concerto is set in E Major, with a crystal-clear architectural plan: a sonataform opening movement, ternary (ABA) slow movement, and a free rondo finale. The work is scored for a conventional mid-century symphony orchestra: pairs of winds and trumpets, plus four horns, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion and strings. Opening with a rustling pattern in the strings over tonic/dominant drum-taps, the piano enters directly with a plaintive theme, played softly in double octaves. This exhibits the dotted rhythms and perfect fourths typical of Hungarian folk music, the wellspring of so much of Bartok’s music. Taken over by the orchestra, the opening melody merges with an assertive transitional passage, leading to the second subject. Beginning with rippling figure in dialogue with the winds, the music settles into an arpeggiated theme in

G Major, growing in intensity and density, then fading into a repeated pattern echoed cuckoo-like between piano and flute solo. A muted horncall (based on the first notes of the first subject) swings the music into the development, with a richly-textured arpeggio accompaniment in A-flat Major played by the piano, supporting an embellished version of the main thematic material played by the winds in unison. In a manner akin to Mozart’s developments, gliding through a succession of tonalities creates contrasts of colour and expressive tone. Pressing ahead with increasing rhythmic energy, abruptly the music swings back to E Major, the recapitulation bringing back the primary theme now heard against a background of trilling strings. The soloist again accompanies the orchestra, this time in heavy block chords, before the reprise of the second subject. The movement slips away with a final appearance of the soft cooing “cuckoo” patterns.

The slow movement written with an artless simplicity that inevitably brings to mind the famous “Hymn of Thanksgiving” movement in Beethoven’s A Minor Quartet, Op. 132. (It is not entirely fanciful to reflect that Bartok himself, composing this concerto while desperately ill, might have been aware of a such a parallel.) The key is a pure C Major, the orchestra part laid out in even quarter-notes, the piano answering in longer half notes, quite hymn-like in character. (Another parallel Beethoven comes to mind: the dialogue between orchestra and piano in the slow movement of the Fourth Piano Concerto---although here there is no element of confrontation or challenge.) The central episode, quicker in tempo, is the last of Bartok’s many magical evocations of the natural world. The whir and chatter of insect life, the murmur and chirrup of bird life are all here, with tremolo strings, sprightly interjections by solo winds, the piano alternating between its own birdcalls and a blur of arpeggios and percussive figure in triple octaves. The opening section returns, the long notes formerly heard in the piano now given to the winds, while the piano now decorates the melodic line with increasingly elaborate figuration. Rising in intensity and chromatic shading, the strings finally enter, arpeggio patterns in the piano thickening the texture, reaching an unexpected climactic point. Just as quickly the music sinks back into the hushed simplicity of C Major.

Sweeping into action, the piano launches the finale with a syncopated theme laid out in block chords in E Major, soon adding a tangy harmonic coloration with much use of major seconds. A drum rhythm receding into silence forms a link to the first contrasting (“B”) section, a free fugato in C-sharp minor. As fugatos go this is quite sprightly and carefree, taking on greater energy as more orchestral voices join in (especially the brass), rounded out as before with the same drum pattern. This time we are deposited in the remote key of B-flat, quite diatonic and insouciant---only to abruptly jump into a new metre (going from triple to duple), then a new key (A flat), and yet another fugato. This one would seem to be going nowhere when, again without warning, we return to the original triple metre, and hear again the recently introduced melody in B-flat. This time there is a precise goal in mind: to return to the home key of E, and recover the syncopated theme which opened the movement. This is accomplished, with the opening theme extended and much more use of the major seconds. A brief pause marks the start of the coda, at first with soft, gliding parallel chords, and the delicate tracery of eighth-note passagework in the piano. The rippling filigree becomes more insistent, thre syncopations take on more power, and the concerto is concluded in a final dash up the keyboard. (The final seventeen bars were realised by Bartok’s pupil Tibor Serly from sketches left upon the death of the composer. Although some have thought this final flourish a trifle too close to the that which wraps up Tchaikovsky’s B-flat minor concerto, this conclusion was based upon shorthand indications left at the end of the all-but-completed manuscript.)