Bartok: Concerto for Orchestra (CD review)

                                                                          
Also, Dance Suite; Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta.  Sir Georg Solti, Chicago Symphony Orchestra.  Decca 475 7711.

In the 1920s, Hungarian-born Georg Solti had been a student in one of Bela Bartok's piano classes and later, in the 1930s, had been a page-turner for Bartok during the Hungarian première of his Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. So, Solti had had an acquaintance with the composer, if ever so fleeting.

Maybe because of this, Solti's two stereo recordings of the Concerto for Orchestra, first with the London Symphony Orchestra in 1965 and then with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1981, display an ample understanding of the composer and his idiom. Decca chose to remaster the LSO performance in its "Legendary Performances" series a few years back, and more recently reissued the CSO performance (reviewed here) in their "Decca Originals" series.

Solti's Chicago Symphony recording may not convey quite the same feeling as the earlier effort, because in the 1965 interpretation Solti allowed himself a moment's respite from time to time, slowing things down occasionally in order to better serve the dynamic and tempo contrasts. But there is no denying the newer account has a forward momentum that is quite pleasing, and with the music arising from dead-quiet silences, it is all the more effectively biting.

For a coupling, Decca provide Bartok's Dance Suite, of which I am not too keen but with which Solti does his best; and the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, all weird and spacey and mysterious, with which Solti is a master. If I still hold Fritz Reiner's interpretations (RCA/JVC) of the Concerto and the Music for Strings in first place, it isn't by much.

As for the audio, the CSO digital recording sounds pretty good, perhaps a result of the remastering, with good definition, those super-quiet backgrounds I mentioned, and fine spacial dimensionality. By comparison, the older LSO recording sounds a bit softer, a bit more natural in some places, but a bit leaner and fuzzier, too.

JJP