Concerto for Orchestra, Sz. 116, Sz. 116

Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra (1943), composed at the Seranak retreat in Massachusetts while the composer was gravely ill, stands as one of the supreme achievements of 20th-century symphonic writing. Commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, it takes its name from the concertante treatment of individual orchestral sections — pairs of instruments trading solos in the second movement 'Game of Pairs,' woodwind families dueling in the scherzo, and the strings blazing in the long-arched finale. The work draws on the full resources of the post-Romantic orchestra while filtering them through Bartók's distinctive synthesis of folk modality, chromaticism, and driving asymmetric rhythm. The premiere in December 1944 was an immediate triumph and helped restore Bartók's finances in his final illness.