The Concerto for Orchestra was composer Bela Bartok's last completed work; he did not live to finish either the Third Piano Concerto or the Viola Concerto that followed it. In these last works, all composed in America, Bartok turned away from the thorny complexities of the music he'd written during the 1920s and '30s in his native Hungary, and toward a more accessible language based on the rhythmic and melodic contours of folk music. Yet there is very little that sounds folkish in these pieces. The writing is still vigorous, still austere and biting in many places. But melody is more prominent, and the rhythmic patterns less complex.

The Concerto for Orchestra has proven to be Bartok's most popular work, due in large part to the directness of its language. As the title suggests, the Concerto for Orchestra treats the various sections and solo instruments of the orchestra as if they were protagonists in a concerto. The idea goes back as far as the Baroque concerto grosso, but Bartok's idiom and scoring are entirely modern. Sooner or later, every principal player is called upon to solo, yet all this virtuosity is integrated into a work of deep expressive content. Even the excitement of the finale is tempered by feelings of mystery and urgency, conveyed via Bartok's tonal ambivalence — he uses modes other than the standard major and minor — and the acerbic quality of his orchestration.

An Authoritative Interpretation From Chicago

It was conductor Fritz Reiner who, together with the violinist Joseph Szigeti, persuaded conductor Serge Koussevitsky to commission Bartok to write the Concerto for Orchestra. After all these years, Reiner's 1955 recording of the score remains the best. Reiner understood the world of this music — the poignant, brooding, mysterious and exuberant moods it explores — and his interpretation speaks with an authority no one else has matched. The Chicago Symphony plays as if it has been set on fire, with panache and plenty of power in reserve.

Related Links

• Bartok: From The Fields To The Concert Hall
• Chicago Symphony Tops U.S. Orchestras

Every once in a while, a trip to the opera offers "two for the price of one," an operatic double bill, and the pairings are often predictable.

The most popular combination is probably the one known as "Cav-Pag": Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci. Both operas are lurid, Italian dramas centering on illicit lust and murder — a pair of verismo potboilers.

The duo of operas featured here also works like a charm, but it isn't nearly so obvious. One opera is Italian, the other is Hungarian. One has more than a dozen characters, the other has only two. One is a good-natured romp, while the other is a sordid psychological thriller. And while both operas appeared in the same year, 1918, their music could hardly be more different.

The "on deck" opera in this pairing is Giacomo Puccini's hilarious Gianni Schicchi. Admittedly, Schicchi is something of a black comedy, a satirical farce with a corpse taking center stage. And Puccini borrowed its premise from a source that's hardly a barrel of laughs: Canto 30 of Dante's Inferno. Still, black comedy or not, Puccini's Gianni Schicchi is one of the funniest operas ever written.

Leading off the double-header is Bela Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle. This one is gloomy from start to finish, though the score does achieve an oddly thrilling level of bleakness. One might feel a bit voyeuristic, as if eavesdropping on a young bride as she slowly discovers the hidden, sadistic side of her new husband's personality, and what it means for her own brief future.

World of Opera host Lisa Simeone presents this surprising double bill from the Washington National Opera, where both productions were directed by William Friedkin — famous for the notoriously spooky movie The Exorcist. And there's an all-star cast, to boot. Samuel Ramey takes the title role in both operas, with Denyce Graves as Bluebeard's bride, Judith. Also, Lisa talks to Placido Domingo, the WNO's general director, about what makes this odd couple of operas so unexpectedly satisfying.

See the previous edition of World of Opera or the full archive.

Related Links

• The Washington National Opera
• Bass Samuel Ramey
• Mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves

Classical music has never lived in a bubble, and there's always been a free flow of ideas intersecting so-called art music and folk music. In this concert from Boston, they all come together: The acclaimed Takacs String Quartet joins the Hungarian folk ensemble Muzsikas (with singer Marta Sebestyen) to celebrate one of Hungary's finest, composer Bela Bartok, who was brilliant at mixing the highbrow and lowbrow in his own music.

Bartok was born in 1881, near the border of Hungary and Romania, and his interest in the folk music from those two countries fueled much of his career as a composer and scholar.

Bartok lugged a bulky Edison phonograph out to remote villages to capture songs from the locals. He also notated songs, and by 1918 he had collected more than 9,000 Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian and Serbian tunes. He also edited folk-song collections — more than 16,000 songs. Bartok made fairly straightforward arrangements of some of those tunes, while sometimes just the spirit of the music made its way into his own pieces.

When the members of the Takacs Quartet and Muzsikas combine for a concert, they delight in making clear the connections between Bartok's own music and his folk-music obsessions. For example, they alternate movements from some of Bartok's best-known pieces (Romanian Folk Dances, String Quartet No. 4) with the real village dances he collected in the field — both the actual old scratchy records and their own live versions thereof.

The Quartet, and Sebestyen, does a convincing bagpipe imitation, and one never knows when Muzsikas might suddenly break into a bear dance from the remote region of Gyimes.

The concert is a remarkable intersection of sounds, giving the listener a toe-tapping glimpse into the mind of a great composer and the rural cultures that inspired him.

Related Links

• Muzsikas Site
• Sebestyen's Site
• Sanda Weigl Brings Gypsy Music To The U.S.
• Ljova: Giving The Viola A Chance
• Le Trio Joubran On Mountain Stage
• DeVotchKa: Songs For A Flying Circus

A brand new ranking of the world's symphony orchestras hits the news stands today, courtesy of the venerable British publication Gramophone. At the No. 1 spot is Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. But the top U.S. orchestra may come as a surprise to some.

Gramophone asked classical music critics from the U.S., Europe and Asia to come up with their top 20 favorite orchestras. After the lists were compiled, the Chicago Symphony came out on top in the U.S. Gramophone editor James Inverne says Chicago beat out some tough competition.

"Actually, this will be a surprise because a lot of people in America would, as a knee-jerk reaction, would rank the New York Philharmonic at the top," Inverne says. "Or, indeed, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which has fantastic technical standards. But Chicago beat a further six orchestras, which were in our top 20, from America."

Inverne says he was inspired to conduct the poll because even though the level of musicianship is rising, there are far fewer orchestras these days that have an immediately identifiable sound.

"It's the equivalent, if you like, of having fewer great charismatic actors, and many more kind of good-looking actors who are fine playing everything, but you don't want to take away their King Lear."

So, what's Chicago's unique, identifiable sound? Inverne has one word: brass.

"Chicago famously has this incredible brass sound," Inverne says. "And it just pins you to the back of your seat. And the way that that brass sound shoots out, exemplifies a lot about the orchestra, which is a sense of adventure in music-making."

The classical music critic for the Chicago Tribune, John von Rhein, wasn't surprised when he heard the news about his hometown orchestra taking the top spot.

"Not to be too Chicago chauvinistic," he says, "but the rankings confirm what those of us here in Chicago have felt for some time."

Von Rhein notes that the 107-year-old Chicago Symphony is not only in good health sonically, but also financially — something of a rarity for orchestras these days.

"As of June 30, the orchestra not only balanced its books, but turned up a modest surplus. They reported strong fundraising, with ticket sales exceeding 85 percent paid capacity, which is high for American orchestras."

While many American orchestras may be struggling financially, they are sounding good, at least according to Gramophone. Seven of the world's top 20, in the new ranking, are U.S. orchestras. And for James Inverne, that's good news. Much better, at least, than the din of backstage drama that sometimes rises above the sound of the music.

"Some of the time it feels like what we're hearing, above everything else about the American orchestral scene, is all the gossip and the intrigue, and the back-biting and conductors being ousted and critic being shuffled around, and all of this kind of thing, but when all is said and done [you Americans] do make some fantastic music."

Related Links

• Chicago Symphony Orchestra Site
• Concertgebouw Orchestra Site
• London Symphony Orchestra Site
• Berlin Philharmonic Site
• Vienna Philharmonic Site
• Full Classical Archive
• Herbert Von Karajan's Top 5 Recordings
• Herbert Von Karajan's Symphonic Obsessions
• Berlin Philharmonic, In Concert At Carnegie Hall

While classics like "Take Five" and the theme to Mission Impossible are excellent places to start when it comes to discovering odd time signatures, many other fantastic, and often lesser known works can be found with a small bit of digging. Here are a five more songs that successfully employ the 5/4 time signature with great diversity, and show how playing in 5 can be used in a variety of approaches and styles.

Hear Sara Fishko's report on classic examples in 5/4 time.

Related Links

• Playing Five Beats To The Measure

Every once in a while, a trip to the opera offers "two for the price of one," an operatic double bill, and the pairings are often predictable.

The most popular combination is probably the one known as "Cav-Pag": Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci. Both operas are lurid, Italian dramas centering on illicit lust and murder — a pair of verismo potboilers.

The duo of operas we've got for you here also works like a charm, but it isn't nearly so obvious. One opera is Italian, the other is Hungarian. One has more than a dozen characters, the other has only two. One is a good-natured romp, while the other is a sordid psychological thriller. And while both operas appeared in the same year, 1918, their music could hardly be more different.

The "on deck" opera in this pairing is Giacomo Puccini's hilarious Gianni Schicchi. Admittedly, Schicchi is something of a black comedy, a satirical farce with a corpse taking center stage. And Puccini borrowed its premise from a source that's hardly a barrel of laughs: Canto 30 of Dante's Inferno. Still, black comedy or not, Puccini's Gianni Schicchi is one of the funniest operas you'll ever hear.

Leading off the double-header is Bela Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle. This one is gloomy from start to finish, though the score does achieve an oddly thrilling level of bleakness. We listen, a bit voyeuristically, as a young bride slowly discovers the hidden, sadistic side of her new husband's personality, and what it means for her own brief future.

World of Opera host Lisa Simeone presents this surprising double bill from the Washington National Opera, where both productions were directed by William Friedkin — famous for the notoriously spooky movie The Exorcist. And there's an all-star cast, to boot. Samuel Ramey takes the title role in both operas, with Denyce Graves as Bluebeard's bride, Judith. Also, Lisa talks to Placido Domingo, the WNO's general director, about what makes this odd couple of operas so unexpectedly satisfying.

Related Links

• The Washington National Opera
• Bass Samuel Ramey
• Mezzo-Soprano Denyce Graves
• Samuel Ramey: Opera's Favorite Bad Guy

Hungarian composer Bela Bartok continues to be one of history's most misunderstood composers. Even in 2007, the suggestion of programming Bartok's music in concert is routinely met with hand-wringing and worries of not being able to fill the seats in the hall.

The problem, I think, is a testament to Bartok's striking individuality and innovative musical voice. Bartok created a unique sound world of exotic mystery which sounds as imposing, even dangerous, today as it did in the early 20th century.

Folk Music Fanatic

In 1904, when Bartok was in his early 20s, he heard a peasant woman singing indigenous folk songs. The experience triggered an "Aha!" moment for Bartok. He became obsessed with tracking down original folk tunes from tiny villages in Hungary and Romania. Together with fellow composer Zoltan Kodaly, Bartok recorded, notated and collected thousands of original tunes, ultimately preserving an entire culture. Bartok's discovery of these folk songs would be the defining factor in the development of his unique style and voice.

The best known of all his folk-related compositions are the Romanian Folk Dances. (audio)

When Bartok combined the unique harmonies and rhythms of these songs with his penchant for odd—sometimes even perverse—story lines, the result was shocking. And some of the music still gives me a jolt today.

Sordid Story, Thrilling Music

Consider the opening of the suite from Bartok's 1926 ballet, The Miraculous Mandarin (audio). The angry scales played by the violins and the spitting woodwinds immediately send us to a foreign and frightening place. It's the perfect set-up for the story of three shady characters who lure people up to their room to beat and rob them.

Later, the hooligans try robbing the Mandarin. There's a weird dance and a chase scene before they try to kill him. But nothing—neither strangling nor suffocation—works. The Mandarin just stares at them with eyes of fire.

Finally, overcome with compassion, one of his tormentors touches the Mandarin, and his wounds begin to bleed and he dies in her arms.

Perhaps not the greatest literary accomplishment, but the story makes for thrilling music.

The era in which Bartok lived was rife with these over-the-top story lines. Bram Stoker's Dracula, set in nearby Transylvania, was written in 1897, and Freud had recently published "On the Interpretation of Dreams. So I don't think it was unusual for Bartok to pick a revisionist rendition of a dark and terror-filled fairy tale as the libretto for his first and only opera, Duke Bluebeard's Castle.

A Fairy Tale Painted Black and Blue

As the music begins, we hear those exotic folk intervals in the lowest region of the orchestra, introducing us to the dark, inner world of Duke Bluebeard, his castle and his soul. (audio)

Bluebeard's new wife, Judith, has heard the rumors of him murdering his former wives, but she loves him anyway and believes she can bring light and warmth to his world of darkness.

Throughout the opera, Judith is met with seven locked doors. She pleads with Bluebeard to open them and he does so reluctantly, one by one.

The first door reveals Bluebeard's torture chamber, with its bloody musical motif. (audio) Between the opening of each door, we learn the inner struggles of both characters.

The climax of the opera occurs with the opening of the fifth door, revealing Bluebeard's vast kingdom. (audio) I love the openness and grandeur Bartok gets out of the huge orchestra through his choice of orchestration and his choice of the spacious key of C major.

Finally, Bluebeard resists opening the last door. As Judith insists, the door swings wide to reveal all of his past wives. And now Judith must join them for eternity.

Bartok Breakthrough

This spring, I presided over a Bartok Festival with the Bournemouth Symphony in England. Delving so deeply into Bartok's music represented one of the highlights of my musical career. I've found that Bartok, the man and his music, is at once profound, sublime, shocking, erotic, thrilling and even despondent. In a word, unique.

I think that this uniqueness—Bart'k's originality—is his greatest achievement, but also his biggest burden. It has formed a barrier between audiences and his art. But I think once you're willing to forgo the world you know and step into Ba'tok's' it's almost impossible not to welcome the depth of his creative expression.

Related Links

• Baltimore Symphony Site
• Alsop's Site
• From the Village to the Concert Hall: Béla Bartók
• Pianist Zoltan Kocsis Performs Bartok
• All Things Hungarian: Bartok and Budapest

For one hour, it's all things Hungarian on Performance Today, beginning with "Improvisations on Gypsy Music" performed by the Budapest Festival Orchestra, led by Ivan Fischer. They're joined by Hungarian folk musicians, the father-and-son duo of Joszef Lendvai (Sr. and Jr.), and cimbalom player Oszkar Okros. Musicologist Peter Laki tells us about Bela Bartok's craving for folk tunes from his native Hungary and elsewhere, and from the Performance Today studio, violinists Andras Keller and Janos Pilz — both members of the Keller String Quartet — perform selections from Bartok's 44 Duos for Two Violins, based on folk tunes.

Related Links

• The Bartok Museum's Site
• Pianist Zoltan Kocsis Performs Bartok
• Pianist Gyorgy Sandor: Lessons on Music, Life
• Cellist Channels Bela Bartok... Led Zeppelin, Too
• The Shanghai Quartet, from Cinema to Studio
• From the Village to the Concert Hall: Béla Bartók

To accompany a concert performance of a seldom-performed piano concerto by Bela Bartok, NPR's Fred Child tells the story of the music's inception in the summer of 1945. Zoltan Kocsis is the pianist, with Sakari Oramo conducting the Finnish Radio Symphony in the Bartok Piano Concerto No. 3.

Related Links

• The Shanghai Quartet Performs Bartok
• From the Village to the Concert Hall: Béla Bartók

Cellist Matt Haimovitz has a knack for showing up in odd places. In 2002, he gave the first-ever classical music performance at New York's legendary punk rock club, CBGB. More recently, he visited all 50 states for his "Anthem" tour, performing Bach at venues such as Austin's Cactus Cafe, and The Palms in Davis, Calif.

Now comes Goulash!, a CD comprised of music that interprets the cultures and rhythms of Eastern Europe. Haimovitz drew his inspiration from Bela Bartok, Hungary's most celebrated composer, who he says "systematically incorporated [gypsy and Hungarian folk music] into his compositional process."

"Virtually every piece of his incorporates this folk connection," Haimovitz says.

Haimovitz includes an acoustic cello rendition of the Led Zeppelin tune "Kashmir," which he plays with the ensemble Uccello. Haimovitz says he first heard "Kashmir" while on tour with rock musician Charlie Hunter.

"I realized there was a Turkish mode in this piece," he notes. "And this fits perfectly on my Turkish-Hungarian-Romanian triumvirate for Goulash!"

Related Links

• Matt Haimovitz/Oxingale Records
• Live at NPR: Cellist Matt Haimovitz

One of the great composers of the early 20th century, Béla Bartók was also one of the founders of the field of ethnomusicology. Bartók collected folk music from Slovakia, Transylvania and his native Hungary, lugging an Edison phonograph across the fields and persuading local peasants to sing into the horn so that he could record their voices.

Peter Laki, a musicologist and editor of the book Bartók and his World, discusses the influence of Eastern European folk songs on the composer.

Related Links

• Bartók Duets for Two Violins
• Immigrant Music
• 'All Songs Considered': Three Hungarian Folk Songs
• Béla Bartók Memorial House