Concerto for Orchestra (Sz. 116, BB 123) is a five-movement musical work for orchestra composed by Béla Bartók in 1943. It is one of his best-known, most popular and most accessible works. The piece was written in 1943, the score being inscribed "15 August - 8 October 1943", and it premiered on December 1, 1944 in Boston Symphony Hall by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitzky. It was a great success and has been regularly p...
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Concerto for Orchestra (Sz. 116, BB 123) is a five-movement musical work for orchestra composed by Béla Bartók in 1943. It is one of his best-known, most popular and most accessible works. The piece was written in 1943, the score being inscribed "15 August - 8 October 1943", and it premiered on December 1, 1944 in Boston Symphony Hall by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitzky. It was a great success and has been regularly performed since. It is perhaps the best-known of a number of pieces that have the apparently contradictory title Concerto for Orchestra. This is in contrast to the conventional concerto form, which features a solo instrument with orchestral accompaniment. Bartók said that he called the piece a concerto rather than a symphony because of the way each section of instruments is treated in a soloistic and virtuosic way.
The work was written in response to a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation (run by the conductor Serge Koussevitzky)...
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