I. Andante tranquillo II. Allegro III. Adagio IV. Allegro molto
Bartók composed this work to a commission from the Basel Chamber Orchestra and their conductor Paul Sacher, and was premiered in early 1937. It was an immense success, perhaps the greatest accorded to a piece of 20th Century music. The first movement of this four part work (which Bartók began sketching even before he received the commission) is constructed fugually. The theme is a strongly chromatic melody, employing relatively narrow intervals, which is then imitated a fifth higher. A third voice then enters a fifth below. More voices enter and the movement heads towards a climax, which causes it to shatter and fall to pieces. Above these fragments, the silvery sound of the celeste is first heard. The great Bartók researcher Ernő Lendvay discovered that in the structural composition of the fugue, Bartók is following the so-called “golden mean” from mathematics. Indeed the 88 bar movement reaches its climax in bar 55, which reinforces our arithmetic suspicions. The second movement by contrast is quick and in a sonata form structure. We hear the piano (which is grouped with the percussion). In its themes, we can recognise certain types of East European folk music – the principal theme follows the so-called “new style” of Hungarian folk songs (although not employing the usual scale of Hungarian folk songs.) The third movement, introduced by beats from the xylophone, quotes the theme of the opening movement. This movement is full of unusual colours and effects, which when it was first played, were extremely novel. The closing finale is a kind of circle dance. The basic motif of the first movement appears expanded in a diatonic version. This A major music seems to proclaim happiness and reconciliation, an intended irony perhaps, in view of impending world events.