Béla Bartók wrote his Viola Concerto (BB128) in July-August 1945, in Saranac Lake, New York, while suffering from the terminal stages of leukemia. It was a response to a commission by William Primrose. Along with the Piano Concerto No. 3, it is his last work, and he left it incomplete at his death.
The concerto was premiered on December 2, 1949 in Minneapolis, with Antal Doráti conducting, and William Primrose playing the solo part.
The work has ...
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Béla Bartók wrote his Viola Concerto (BB128) in July-August 1945, in Saranac Lake, New York, while suffering from the terminal stages of leukemia. It was a response to a commission by William Primrose. Along with the Piano Concerto No. 3, it is his last work, and he left it incomplete at his death.
The concerto was premiered on December 2, 1949 in Minneapolis, with Antal Doráti conducting, and William Primrose playing the solo part.
The work has been completed three times, once by Tibor Serly (1950); once by Peter Bartók (son of composer), Paul Neubauer, and Nelson Dellamaggiore (1995); and once by Csaba Erdelyi (copyright laws limit the availability of the Erdelyi version to retail stores in New Zealand and over the Internet). The score suggests three movements with interconnecting passages, somewhat in the character of a ritornello, and this is how the completed versions run; however, Bartók mentioned in an unsent letter to Primrose that he intended the work to have four movements...
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