Hai Kyung Suh:

About the pieces:

Bartók wrote the Romanian Dance (Op.8a) between 1909 and 1910 on a piano. He rewrote the first dance to an orchestra for a concert held February 12, 1911. The extremely positive reviews of the premier describe the piece as a brilliantly orchestrated, bizarrely harmonized and orgiastic finished. The audience welcomed the piece with overwhelmed enthusiasm so the orchestra needed to repeat it. According to Bartók’s statement in 1931, although the piece has Romanian folk inspiration the composer worked off his own themes. (Last BFO performance December 20, 1997, Academy of Music, Budapest, conductor Ivan Fischer)

The Concerto is Bartók’s first work, which he composed during his American emigration after four years of silence. The title refers to a specific genre of baroque music, which contrasts different musical instruments and their groups and leads them to contest. It was completed within two months in surprising speed but the premier was a year later: Serge Koussevitzky conducted it in December 1944 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. “The Concerto is a summarizing piece; like Mozart’s Magic Flute. It affiliates age, era and creator in an unusual harmony. Its perfect closeness and its poetry, which cannot be carry on, marks the end of life (…) the year 1943 gives the key to the message of Concerto. This piece has a message put in words as well, which sets it apart from neoclassical compositions. Bartók – contrary of his usual practice – deals not only with musical questions but refers to the concept of the work: ‘The mood of the piece – despite of the funny second movement – entirely effects the gradual transition from the darkness of the funeral wailing song of the first and third movement to the life-affirmation of the last one.” (András Batta) (Last BFO performance January 18, 2007 Liederhalle, Stuttgart, Germany, conductor Ivan Fischer)