Balázs KECSKÉS D.: Viola Concerto (excerpt - 2nd movement and first half of the 3rd movement)
Recorded on 3 December, 2024, Budapest, Pesti Vigadó. Performed by Máté Szűcs (viola), Martin Rajna (conductor) and the Hungarian National Philharmonic.
I. sonata-rubble
II. intermezzo
III. individual crumbs
The new concerto was commissioned by the Győr Philharmonic Orchestra and the Peter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation; it was written in 2022-23, as a closing composition of the composer's time as a mentee of the Foundation. Balázs D. Kecskés met violist Máté Szűcs and came into closer contact with the viola when he was working on the orchestration of the new version of Bartók's unfinished Viola Concerto by Miklós Rakos.
The middle movement of the three-movement concerto, labeled "intermezzo", is a short, lyrical transition between the large-scale outer movements, which both have independent, characteristic titles. The opening movement - with the inscription "sonata-rubble" - awakens memories of classical-romantic concertos in the listener, but the expectations often turn out to be wrong, the sonata form is realized only in fragments, again and again deviating from its goal. The final movement - entitled "individual-crumbs" - is a kind of collage, in which individual thematic surfaces follow each other with sudden cuts. In the entire concerto, the main role clearly belongs to the solo instrument, which shows the viola's versatile character-shaping capabilities.