Each new Bartok recital seems to bring us one or two pieces not previously listed in the Gramophone Compact Disc Catalogue. Peter Frankl offers the fine Two Romanian dances of 1909/10, the Ten Easy Pieces of 1908 (fascinating in their blend of late-romanticism and folklore-modernism) and what is advertised as the first recording of an Andante which was to have been the second movement of the 1914 Suite before the composer (wisely) discarded it.
Frankl has no truck with the revisionist view that a degree of understatement can bring out the best in Bartok's piano works. Personally I don't have a problem with that, provided the playing is enthusiastic and full-blooded, as it undoubtedly is here. What I do miss is sufficient variety of touch and accent within that full-bloodedness, and, surprisingly, sufficient rhythmic stability on which to base the enthusiasm. The forcefulness brings diminishing returns.
I don't mean to take issue with Frankl's rubato in such pieces as the first of the Hungarian peasant songs, which actually carries that marking, or with his parlando inflexions of the first of the Two Romanian dances, which seem thoroughly idiomatic. The little Romanian folkdances are also attractively played, and the complexities of the Burlesques are effectively disentangled. But the last of the Hungarian peasant songs wobbles alarmingly, and much of the Suite sounds distorted and unnatural.
Tone-quality is the main problem, and ASV's engineering compounds it—the recording in the Henry Wood Hall is far too close and reverberant. The impression that comes across is of excess volume and insufficient depth of tone, of excessive middle register projection and insufficient shine on the treble. Rather than expanding naturally the sound seems forced out as though through a narrow tube (the actual tuning of the instrument is a problem, too, from time to time). The climax to the First Romanian Dance is one of several passages where the notes will not bear close scrutiny, and it is surprising to hear such a crude manhandling of the Allegro barbaro from an artist of Frankl's reputation.'