Bartok Concerto

Posted: Monday | 05.07.12

Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra & Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta

Bartók:

Concerto for Orchestra, BB 123, Sz.116

Music for Strings, Percussion & Celesta, BB 114, Sz. 106

Performed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Marin Alsop

Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, one of his greatest works, was written in the United States after the composer was forced to escape from Hungary during World War II. It is not only a brilliant display piece for each instrumental section but a work of considerable structural ingenuity that unites classical forms with folk rhythms and harmonies.

Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta explores darker moods through a score of amazing symmetry.

This has long been a popular coupling of works by Béla Bartók, but Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra have a synergy which has made their Dvořák symphonic recordings sound ‘as fresh as when Dvořák put pen to paper’ (BBC Music Magazine.

Of Dvořák’s New World Symphony BBC Music Magazine also wrote, ‘it is rare to be able to say that a performance forces one to listen to a work anew, but this is exactly what Alsop’s reading achieves.’

Here is the Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra with David Zinman conducting the Berliner Philharmoniker