Kenneth Woods, conductor

Bela Bartok- Concerto for Viola (1945) completed by Tibor Serly

William Primrose, maybe the most important violist of modern times, asked the then ailing Bartok to write a concerto for his use in 1945. Since emigrating from Hungary to the US in 1939, Bartok had endured a period of terrible neglect, poverty and homesickness. Howard Hanson, the reactionary and xenophobic president of the Eastman School of Music, had turned away Bartok's application for a teaching position in spite of his reputation as possible the world's most important living composer and ethnomusicologist.

Word of Bartok's desperate situation finally reached Serge Koussevitsky, the visionary music director of the Boston Symphony who did as much as any conductor in the 20^th Century to commission and premiere important new works. In 1942, upon hearing that Bartok was both ill and destitute, Koussevitsky doubted Bartok would be up to the strain of writing a major work, but also knew that Bartok would not accept charity. Koussevitsky commissioned Bartok to write a showpiece for the Boston Symphony, and Bartok was so overjoyed at the opportunity that he quickly forgot his problems and embarked on the writing of his Concerto for Orchestra, a joyous and brilliant piece universally acknowledged as one of the masterpieces of the 20^th Century.

After this, commissions began to pour in, and Bartok turned to work on a 3^rd Piano Concerto, a Sonata for Solo Violin and the Viola Concerto. By 1945, his health was rapidly failing, and it became clear while working on the 3^rd Piano Concerto and the Viola Concerto that he would not finish either work. Bartok hoped the Piano Concerto would provide a source of income for his wife, the pianist for whom it was written, and so made a great push to complete the work before succumbing to leukemia. Bartok entrusted the completion of the Viola Concerto to his friend and former pupil Tibor Serly.

Like the Concerto for Orchestra and the last Piano Concerto, the Viola Concerto is a profoundly lyrical, spiritual and life affirming work. In those sad, final years Bartok found within himself a warmth and joy that listeners continue to marvel at 50 years later. The first movement is the most complete and fully developed and shows Bartok at the height of his musical powers. The lyrical second movement is deeply spiritual in feeling, but the folk-music inspired fire of the finale is no less full of life. Sadly, the finale shows the most evidence of Serly’s hand- in spite of the richly promising musical material the movement is less completely developed that one would expect in a mature work of the master. Still a brilliant conclusion to the greatest work in the viola repertoire, its slightly weakened musical nature is a poignant reminder of it’s creator who did not live to hear it performed.