Folk Influenced Concertos

Have recently received the latest edition of BBC Music magazine and the cover disk this month has two Concertos For Orchestra, those by Bartok and Lutoslawski. I have another commercial recording of the Bartok which has its' turn off the shelf fairly soon now, so won't talk too much about the performance here by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Tadaaki Otaka. Both concertos are folk influenced and were written with in a few years of each other in the mid twentieth century. The Bartok concerto was the first and was written in the freedom of the US and so established itself first in the repertoire. That lead over the Lutoslawski ( which was written under the constraints of the Stalinist Polish authorities ) has been maintained but the composer himself conducts a fine performance from the BBC Symphony Orchestra on this live recording from 1986. The first two movements of the concerto act as preludes to the extended finale which has a passacaglia based on a Polish folk theme leading to an exhilarating toccata bringing the work to a conclusion.