In that December 30, 1944 rendition (Naxos 110105), Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony stress the works dramatic sweep and logical flow.

Nowadays, though, few know or care about new serious music and concerts have become archives of works several generations, if not centuries, old.

Of all the great 20th century composers, Bartk would have been the most alarmed at this development.

Then, in his early twenties, he belatedly discovered the folk music of his native Hungary and his outlook was forever transformed.

Many composers had used folk melodies to enliven standard musical forms, but Bartk set out on a more challenging path - to capture and convey the character and essence of an entire mode of music.

Bartk spent years in the field with a primitive Edison cylinder machine meticulously recording and transcribing thousands of songs.

His extensive writings are a major foundation of modern ethnomusicology.

To further expose his findings, at first he published concert arrangements of folk music but soon they imbued his original compositions.

His goal was both scientific - to preserve, classify and analyze folk material - as well as practical - to encourage performance and appreciation both in Hungary and throughout the world.

As his fame spread, he traveled to explore and compare other folk traditions.

Ultimately he put theory into practice: although firmly rooted in Hungarian tradition, his own music came to actively embrace contributions from his other areas of study.

Distressed over his beloved countrys capitulation to the Nazis, he had emigrated to New York in 1940, leaving behind the royalties and colleagues who had provided his financial and professional support.

He sent his original manuscripts to Switzerland for safe-keeping.) His activity as a scholar, performer and composer seemed over - a brief stint arranging archival folk recordings at Columbia University ended without hope for extension, his few recitals had met with critical hostility and public indifference and he had written no new music for four years.

Indeed, his Mikrokosmos, an eclectic collection of 153 piano pieces completed in 1939, seemed to summarize all he had experienced and suggested a swan-song.

Always of tenuous health, he had been hospitalized, weighing a mere 87 pounds.

Although destitute, he was intensely private and wary of even a hint of charity.

He considered himself an exile in an alien land and ached to return home.

When its conductor Serge Koussevitzky arrived at the hospital with a substantial down payment, the effect was astounding.

Bartk immediately rallied, left for an ASCAP retreat in upstate New York and within seven weeks finished the piece.

He orchestrated it that winter in Asheville, North Carolina.).

It drew attention to the neglected composer and his other work.

But Bartks health again failed and he died the next September, leaving the Concerto for Orchestra as his testament.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the second of the five movements, which he entitled the Game of Pairs - with a sound derived from Yugoslavian folk music, two bassoons, oboes, clarinets, flutes and trumpets each in turn play a sly, jaunty tune in parallel sixths, thirds, sevenths, fifths and seconds, and then repeat the process augmented by further instruments.

Although the world premiere wasnt recorded, we do have a fine concert in which the original forces repeated their triumph a mere four weeks later.

Bartok Concerto For Orchestra Analysis