Through the mid 1950s, Rózsa managed to find enough time between film projects to produce two substantial works, his Violin Concerto and Hungarian Serenade. In 1957, having finished the score for the film Lust for Life, he decided to write a more compact concert work. The 1956 Hungarian revolt-a civilian uprising put down by Soviet tanks-occupied the composer's mind and inspired in Rózsa a serious, dramatic, even defiant curtain-raiser. Yet this generically-named Overture to a Symphony Concert follows no program and dispenses with either anguished protest music or any sort of "paean to the people." It opens with a brass fanfare that will remind listeners of the charioteer music in Ben-Hur. The bottom of orchestra then picks up a muscular Hungarian melody, which rises quickly through the sections. Gradually this gives way to a restless, more questioning theme introduced by violins; it becomes more ominous as it is transferred through the orchestra. These two ideas then develop in one of Rózsa's typical, tightly-managed sonata structures. In style, the music brings to mind Kodály's Symphony and Concerto for Orchestra: serious music, with a highly Hungarian inflection.



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