Béla Bartók: Concerto

First of all, I owe you a confession: I believe it was Bartók’s Concerto—and, of course, Bartók’s output itself—that made a musician of me. I have studied music since childhood, although I attended an ordinary, ‘mainstream’ secondary school specialising in mathematics and physics, the József Attila Grammar School. In my third year there, the school team took part in the first Bartók culture competition on the radio, and it had an immeasurable effect on me—even though I knew relatively little about music. (I knew especially little about the music literature.) But I was all the more blessed with a love of music! I’d like to dedicate this performance to the memory of my unforgettable teacher, László Somogyi1—a figure of decisive importance in my career as a conductor—to whom I am bound, among other things, by a Concerto interpretation I happened to witness during a course in Szombathely.

László Somogyi—alongside János Ferencsik—was one of the iconic figures of Hungarian musical life. Above all, though, he was a remarkable teacher who brought up generations of conductors, including world-renowned figures like István Kertész.2 László Somogyi was famous for his sudden outbursts of anger. He made no compromises, brooked no contradiction, allowed no alternatives. He simply stated: ‘This is how it must be done.’ He explained why, and after that there was no mercy; if anyone failed to do as he expected, he flew into a terrible rage. I keep my Concerto score as a memento. It is in poor condition, taped together, because László Somogyi snatched it up and threw it at my head so hard that the score tore in two. He did it because, even after he had said it a second and a third time, I still hadn’t ‘done it that way’—and that was simply unacceptable to him.

And lo and behold: to this very day I remember every word he said, words that have gradually taken on ever deeper meaning over the course of my life! We musicians—in our own defence—often act as if there were many different ways to perform a piece. Then the critics can have a nice little debate about ¹ László Somogyi (1907–1988), conductor; studied under Kodály and Leó Weiner, and later became head of the conducting department. In the 1950s he was principal conductor of the Hungarian Radio Orchestra. He emigrated in 1956. From 1964 to 1968 he was principal conductor of the Rochester Symphony. From the 1980s he gave several masterclasses in Szombathely, Hungary, at the Bartók Seminar.

² István Kertész (1929–1973), world-renowned conductor; among other posts, music director of the Augsburg Opera, principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and later of the Bamberg Symphony; he is credited with the first complete recording of Mozart’s opera

La clemenza di Tito.

who is right… In fact, if we know a work very well, there is only one correct solution. Of course, to borrow the words of another beloved teacher of mine, Professor Pernye,3 there is some leeway. Within certain limits of tempo or dynamics, for instance, the essence stays the same—yet fundamentally there is only one correct solution. It was László Somogyi who, with immeasurable rigour and at times a frenzied passion, demanded order in this matter, and that order was indeed established, staying with him all his life. The Concerto is very important to me; what is more, it is a summing-up of Bartók’s output that can open the door to understanding Bartók even for those with little knowledge of music. First we must ask why Bartók calls this work a Concerto.

It is a symphonic work—so why not a symphony?4 Twentieth-century composers shy away from traditional titles, and when they don’t, everyone is left baffled. It is relatively rare for a piece to be called what it actually is. Just last week5 we presented a wonderful work, Levente Gyöngyösi’s Symphony No. 1, which its composer—with great courage—dares to call a symphony. Perhaps the reason twentieth-century composers have sought to avoid the label is that they want to steer clear of being measured against the expectations of earlier centuries. So audiences brought up on the symphonies of Brahms or Tchaikovsky should not expect to hear anything of the kind here!

In the end Bartók chose the title Concerto because he wrote the work for an orchestra—specifically the Boston Symphony Orchestra—and wanted to give it a very good ‘piece to play’, one in which the various sections of the orchestra could shine and say, ‘well, we’ve played that!’. And indeed, performing the Concerto is a major challenge every time. Moreover, it really does have the character of a concerto: certain instrumental groups step out from the rest and stand against the orchestra—and that is the very essence of a concerto! The concerto—in Hungarian, a versenymI6—means nothing other than that a soloist, or a particular group of instruments, ‘stands in opposition’ to the full orchestra. If we listen to the middle of the first movement, the development, it is clear that we are hearing Baroque wind music.

³ András Pernye (19 November 1928, Budapest – 4 April 1980, Budapest), Erkel Prize-winning music historian, specialist writer and university lecturer. In the 1960s he also became known as a panellist on the TV quiz show Ki mit tud?. He was one of the first music critics to champion jazz and popular music. ⁴ Symphony: a multi-movement orchestral genre that has played a defining role ever since the orchestra took shape—that is, from the eighteenth century onwards.

versenymű

⁵ The premiere of Gyöngyösi’s Symphony No. 1 took place in 2009. ⁶ Concerto: meaning a concert piece. The origin of the word is linked both to consertum (agreement, connection) and to concertatum (competition). In the sixteenth century, consertum referred to the tuning-together and ensemble playing of instruments at different pitches. The term ‘consort’ also derives from this word, and appears in the names of many musical ensembles. This section is a veritable little concerto within the piece. The second movement is even more of a concerto, with pairs of instruments engaging in a musical dialogue—and out of this interplay something marvellous emerges! To understand Bartók, it is worth looking closely at the fundamental features of his output: the folding of folklore into his musical thinking, the use of intonations, and the application of the bridge form.

Moreover, as a composer who was romantic at heart, Bartók—like many of his predecessors—has the distinctive habit of writing the very process of the music’s creation into the piece itself. On several occasions, explaining other composers’ works—Haydn’s, Beethoven’s and many a Romantic’s—I have spoken of how they unfold the antecedents of the birth of a particular theme or idea. Bartók goes even further. In his work the phase of the musical process leading up to the birth of the theme appears as well: that struggle over what takes shape, and how, often out of nothing. Bartók’s technique of development—that is, everything that happens to musical ideas within musical processes—is distinctly twentieth-century and so individual that we can recognise Bartók at any given moment.

A good example is the way he handles the technique of altering a melodic line: if a melody rises, Bartók also shows its opposite. We call this mirroring. But there are also places where he reverses melodies. These devices greatly help us find our bearings within the piece. Right from the opening bars of the first movement, we meet the very roots of Bartók’s thinking: folklore. The flutes, then the trumpets, play a theme which—to my mind, apart from well-trained musicians—no one would take for folk music. Yet watch the melodic line and the four-bar phrasing, and we sense the ancient, Hungarian, descending folk-song type.