Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra

Even the greatest artists need a little inspiration. Destitute and in exile, Béla Bartók believed his creative life was over in 1943. His friend, the conductor Serge Koussevitsky, thought otherwise and re-energized Bartók with a major commission.

Eight weeks later Bartók delivered his Concerto for Orchestra – an irrepressible firecracker of a piece that combines percussive panache with a warm soul. ‘The Bergen orchestra sounds wonderfully alive to Bartók’s rhythmic exactitudes,’ wrote The Observer in London when the orchestra last recorded the piece, in 2017.

Ørjan Matre was inspired by Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring when he wrote PreSage in 2013, a ritual for orchestra that clings resolutely to a two-note rhythm and a fixed string chord lifted from Stravinsky’s piece, and whips them into a frenzy.

Few artists are more inspiring than our season’s Artist-in-Residence, Isabelle Faust, who performs Dvořák’s breathtakingly beautiful Violin Concerto as the centerpiece of this concert under the brilliant Dinis Sousa.

Isabelle Faust, photo: Felix Broede