For the 50th anniversary celebration of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s founding, the orchestra in 1939 asked Zoltan Kodály to compose a new orchestral work; the resulting Concerto For Orchestra was premièred in 1941 under then conductor Frederic Stock. + Dedicated to the memory of Arturo Toscanini, Kodály’s three-movement Symphony was first performed by the Lucerne Festival Orchestra under Ferenc Fricsay in 1961. + Summer Evening (1906; rev. 1928) reveals early hints of the folk music gathered during his first collecting trips, which inspired and infused much of his later output.
