Soulless Bartok well-packaged, well-displayed but barely score-deep. Consider the ''Elegia'' from the Concerto for Orchestra. Bartok's 'vale of tears' is formally announced in double-bass and timpani; against the shimmer of divided violins, well-manicured flutes, clarinets and harp overlay their ripple effect, the oboe reiterates a high B natural. But where is the music? When Bartok's distress spills over in agonized convulsions from strings and trumpets, the execution is so precise, the phrase-lengths so mean, so neatly squared-off, the rubato so calculated, that spontaneity, or even the illusion of spontaneity, is an impossibility.
From bar one, page one, Jansons conveys precious little but his command of the notes—another depressing instance of mind and matter over spirit. I refer you to Fricsay's DG 1957 mono recording or Reiner's 1955 stereo version on RCA for confirmation that these notes do have an identity, an inner-life. Just listen to Fricsay unlock the veiled mysteries of the ''Introduzione'': the intense nocturnal rustling of sul ponticello strings, the primitive chanting of close-harmony trumpets, and later the haunting Magyar melismas (lovingly attended) that come and go between festive brass. Jansons is all style and surface brilliance but no heart. His well-drilled Oslo winds trip smartly, efficiently, charmlessly, through their two-by-two games, expressions fixed (bland does not describe the brass chorale trio), his ''Intermezzo interrotto'' is a rude joke cleaned up for general consumption.
As for the Music for strings, percussion and celesta, whatever happened to the atmosphere that inspired legions of copy-cat film scores, the eerie evolution of that opening viola figure into a slow fugue of voices older than time itself? Scherzo and finale have no fibre: these rhythms were never born of the land; they belong amongst city-slickers. In a word, urbane—and Bartok was never that. I repeat, forget top-notch digital technology: Reiner's incomparable RCA masters still sound well in this coupling. Fricsay is required listening for the Concerto.'