Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. posthumous

It is rare for a piece of instrumental music to be as clearly a declaration of love as Béla Bartók’s First Violin Concerto. In a way, the work was too intensely personal for its own good: its dedicatee never performed it, and the composer himself, after a few attempts, shelved the work. The concerto was not heard in its original form until 1958, after both composer and dedicatee had passed away. As a result, a major milestone in Bartók’s development as a composer was revealed to the world only belatedly. 

Bartók was 26 years old when he fell passionately in love with Stefi Geyer, a charming and highly gifted violin student at the Budapest Conservatory. Though Geyer was friendly toward the composer, she did not return his feelings and became particularly upset over his criticism of her Catholic faith. She eventually broke off relations with Bartók, who suffered what was probably the deepest emotional crisis of his entire life. Upon receiving Geyer’s break-up letter on February 13, 1908, Bartók wrote a piano piece that became No. 13 of his 14 Bagatelles for piano. This funeral dirge bears the French subtitle “Elle est morte” — She is dead. 

Bartók’s infatuation with Geyer, which lasted about a year, came at a time when the composer had just begun to find his individual voice as a composer, which synthesized Modernism with elements of folk music. The Violin Concerto, therefore, shows him at a crossroads. In addition to being a declaration of love, the concerto is a document of his artistic quest. 

The concerto opens with the solo violin by itself, playing what Bartók explicitly described as “your leitmotive” in one of his letters to Geyer. This four-note motive dominates the entire concerto. Bartók referred to the two movements of the concerto as musical portraits: the first movement represents the “idealized Stefi Geyer, celestial and inward,” and the second the “cheerful, witty, amusing” side of her personality. Bartók had at one point planned a third movement, portraying the “indifferent, cool, and silent Stefi Geyer” through music that would have been “hateful” — but he quickly abandoned the idea. 

The orchestra joins the soloist only gradually; at first, we hear a few stands of orchestral violins, with additional players entering until the entire orchestra is involved. In true post-Romantic fashion, the music winds its way to a fortissimo climax and back to the initial pianissimo. The poignant coda is announced by the entrance of the triangle and the two harps, accompanying a solo violin that climbs into the highest register of the instrument to close the movement on Geyer’s motive. 

The second-movement Allegro giocoso is playful and brilliant overall, but also includes a lengthy middle section that reverts to the dreamy Romanticism of the first movement. Shortly before the end, the flutes play a quirky little tune that is evidently a personal message from Bartók to Geyer. In the score, the tune is placed in quotation marks and bears the note: “Jászberény, June 28th, 1907.” Bartok had spent a few days in this Hungarian city with Geyer and her brother; it was there that he made the first sketches for the concerto on July 1, three days after the above date. The tune itself is a German children’s song known as “Der Esel ist ein dummes Tier” (The donkey is a foolish beast). The last thing played by the soloist is, not surprisingly, the four-note Geyer motive, cut off by a short and almost brutal orchestral closure. 

Some 30 years later, Bartók resumed contact with Geyer. Both had by then married, and the two enjoyed a friendly rapport. Geyer championed Bartók’s violin works and even helped the composer and his wife emigrate to the United States in 1940 to escape the threat of fascism in Europe. 

But back in 1908, the young composer’s feelings were still raw. Following his “funeral” bagatelle written the day of the breakup, Bartók turned Geyer’s motive into a biting caricature, twisting it into a furious waltz in his Bagatelle No. 14. In 1911, Bartók orchestrated this bagatelle as the second of his Two Portraits. And what was the first portrait? None other than a reworked version of the first movement of the then-hidden concerto. Thus, even decades before the rediscovery and premiere of Bartók’s First Violin Concerto, listeners could get to know, through music, the young woman who first broke Bartók’s heart and would later save his life. 

— adapted from a note by Peter Laki 

Peter Laki is a musicologist and frequent lecturer on classical music. He is a visiting associate professor of music, emeritus, at Bard College and was The Cleveland Orchestra’s program annotator from 1990 to 2007.