Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra

Kensington Symphony Orchestra, under music director Russell Keable, performs Bartók’s spectacular orchestral showpiece. After fleeing Hungary for the US during the Second World War, Bartók was in hospital – suffering from what would later be diagnosed as leukaemia – when Serge Koussevitzky visited him to offer a new commission. The resulting orchestral showpiece, his Concerto for orchestra (1943), was premièred by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1944. It soon became his most popular work.