Bartók's Early Violin Concerto

At one of the concerts of the Bartók Festival in Basel this year, the first performance was given of the composer's early Violin Concerto. It had long been known that the first of the Two Portraits, Op. 5, was a movement from it, but the complete work was for many years believed lost. Fortunately the manuscript score had been carefully kept by the Hungarian-born violinist Stefi Geyer, for whom Bartók wrote it, and at her death she left it to Paul Sacher with the request that he and the Swiss violinist Hans-Heinz Schneeberger should perform it. They did so at Basel on 30th May, 1958.