Concerto for Orchestra

The concerto for orchestra is a twentieth-century orchestral genre in which the orchestra itself is the soloist: instead of one virtuoso set against the mass, individual players and sections step forward in turn for concertante display inside a symphonic argument. The name was established by *Paul Hindemith* (1925) and *Zoltán Kodály* (1939), and fixed permanently by *Béla Bartók*'s "Concerto for Orchestra" (1943), the most performed example. Composers from *Witold Lutosławski* to *Elliott Carter* and *Jennifer Higdon* have used the genre to test an orchestra's collective virtuosity and colour.