In a letter to Primrose in September, the composer claimed that he was almost done with the piece and he only had to finish the orchestration. It was July 1945 and he was suffering from the terminal stages of leukemia. Unfortunately, he did not live enough to see it or to hear Primrose play the piece.īartók was living in Saranac Lake, New York when he began working on the concerto.
Bartók was not a well-known composer in the USA at that time and we can say that this Viola Concerto brought him fame. The Bartók Viola Concerto was commissioned by the virtuoso violist William Primrose in the winter of 1944. Only rough, handwritten scratches of the concerto were found after the composer’s death, but the concerto was eventually completed finished by his close friend and has since found its way into the repertoire of every violist who is looking for a challenge. Bartók’s Viola Concerto is an amazing piece and was actually left unfinished by the composer Béla Bartók.