Program notes

 

 

PROGRAM NOTES 

by Phillip Huscher 

 

Zoltán Kodály

 

Born December 16, 1882, Kecskemét, Hungary. 

Died March 6, 1967, Budapest, Hungary.  

 

Concerto for Orchestra

  

Kodály composed the Concerto for Orchestra in 1939 and 1940, on a commission from the Chicago 

Symphony Orchestra, to honor its fiftieth anniversary. The first performance was given by the Orchestra, 

under Frederick Stock, on February 6, 1941. The score calls for three flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two 

clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, triangle, harp, 

and strings. Performance time is approximately twenty-two minutes.  

 

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra gave the world premiere performances of Kodály's Concerto for 

Orchestra (commissioned for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's fiftieth season) on subscription concerts 

at Orchestra Hall on February 6 and 7, 1941, with Frederick Stock conducting. Our most recent 

subscription concert performances were given on December 18, 19, and 20, 1986, with Erich Leinsdorf 

conducting.

 

 

To most musicians today, the title “concerto for orchestra” suggests Béla Bartók's landmark 1943 score of 

that name. Bartók's is the most celebrated, but it's neither the first nor the last work with this title. Paul 

Hindemith, Walter Piston, and Zoltán Kodály all wrote concertos for orchestra before Bartók, and Witold 

Lutoslawski (whose work closes this concert), Michael Tippett, Elliott Carter, Joan Tower, Shulamit Ran, 

and Magnus Lindberg are among those who have done so after his famous example. (The American 

composer Steve Stucky has even written two concertos for orchestra, the second one winning the 2005 

Pulitzer Prize for Music.)  

 

Zoltán Kodály, one of the few to precede Bartók in this form, wrote his Concerto for Orchestra on a 

commission from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to honor its fiftieth anniversary. (He had recently 

written two of his most popular works as anniversary tributes: the Dances of Galánta to honor the 

Budapest Philharmonic, and the Peacock Variations for Amsterdam's Concertgebouw.)  

 

The Chicago Symphony went all out to celebrate its jubilee season by commissioning an impressive 

group of new pieces for the occasion. Music director Frederick Stock, who had been conducting the 

orchestra for more than thirty years (he had played in its viola section for ten years before that), 

approached seven composers then living in the United States, including Igor Stravinsky, Roy Harris, and 

Chicagoan John Alden Carpenter. (Stock himself, an off-hours composer, agreed to contribute a work as 

well.) In the summer of 1939, with the threat of war on the horizon, Stock went to Europe to get signed 

contracts from six more internationally known figures: Alfredo Casella of Italy, William Walton of England, 

Darius Milhaud of France, Reinhold Glière and Nicholas Miaskowski of Russia, and Hungary's Zoltán 

Kodály.  

 

Kodály's Concerto for Orchestra was premiered under Stock's baton in February 1941, midway through 

the Orchestra's fiftieth season. (The series of commissions had been launched on opening night that 

October by Stock's Festival Fanfare.) The then-novel concept of a concerto for orchestra needed 

explanation, and the program notes reminded listeners that “the word 'concerto' is used here, not in the 

sense of a brilliant and showy composition for a solo instrument, or instruments, with symphonic 

accompaniment, but in the original employment of the word to denote a combination of instruments.” 

Although the Concerto for Orchestra is a quintessentially modern form—an “invention” of the mid-

twentieth century—its roots can be traced back to baroque works such as Bach's First and Third 

Brandenburg concertos, which pass the solo opportunities around from section to section.  

 

Kodaly's score is an arresting combination of baroque architecture and Hungarian folk material. Stock told 

The New York Times that he felt the entire work was imbued with Hungarian rhythm, “with all the 

elements of gypsy music developed to the last degree along the lines of symphony pattern.” This 

concerto is a single span of music, divided into distinct sections. The way it alternates full orchestral 

paragraphs with passages for selected soloists is an obvious throwback to the concerto grosso of Bach's 

time. It begins, not unlike one of the Brandenburgs, with a unison statement of the main theme. In the 

opening Allegro risoluto section, the solo spotlight falls first on the individual winds, then the brass, later a 

single violin. The spacious, measured Largo that follows begins with solos for various string instruments, 

answered by the clarinet. As other instruments enter, this eventually grows from a rich and varied kind of 

chamber music into a dramatic symphonic slow movement. What happens next is partly recapitulation, 

with a return to the spirited opening material, this time highlighted by new solos and new adventures, 

followed by another Largo, more concentrated than the last. There is a short, full orchestral sprint to the 

final measure.  

 

Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. 

 

 

 

 

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