Bartok's passion for the violinist Steffi Geyer inspired two very different musical love-letters: the First Violin Concerto and the Two Portraits, both of which have the one subtly perfumed first movement in common. But whereas the concerto's second movement is a Straussian Allegro giocoso, full of hot-headed mood changes and sighing reflections, the Second Portrait is a ferocious distortion of the First's serene main theme (it originally surfaced as a piano Bagatelle). Nimbus highlight the relationship between these two works by utilizing, on both CDs, the one performance of the First Portrait/Concerto first movement. Not that it matters: the music is the same, and the fact that the performances are too underlines the astonishing difference in effect between the two complete compositions.
Gerhard Hetzel was the Vienna Philharmonic's principal leader; he died a year or so after these recordings were made, and that he was an experienced and perceptive Bartokian is beyond doubt. He also avoided at least two pitfalls commonly visited by interpreters of Bartok's two violin concertos: excessive attack and expressive overkill. His bowing is full and warm (qualities much facilitated by the 1709 Stradivarius he plays), and his flowing turn of phrase evidence of careful study and deep understanding. The lyrical aspects of both works are cultivated with considerable affection, yet the Second Concerto's many varied effects––including the spiky chatter that darts about the centre of the second movement––are reported with admirable precision. Occasional awkward turns or discoloured notes barely register, so generous are Hetzel's tone and spirit. However, his orchestral collaborators are less satisfactory. Although Adam Fischer shares Hetzel's lyrical view of Bartok, his orchestra is relegated to an unhelpfully ambient backdrop––which is fine when the music is hazily impressionistic (as it so often is in the Concerto/Portrait), but muddies and confuses Bartok's meticulous scoring elsewhere.
Of course, this is far less of a problem with The wooden prince suite, an amiable, post-romantic side-show of Straussian and Debussyan gestures, nicely paraded by Fischer and his players. The Second Portrait, too, comes over well––burly and fierce, with plenty of depth. It might have been a sensible idea to fill out the double-pack's first (39'25'') CD by including the whole of the First Concerto's second movement, thus affording collectors the opportunity of turning the First Portrait into a concerto, or vice versa. But, in the event, Nimbus decided to include a second, more generous CD in their package which couples two of Bartok's greatest works from the 1930s, both of them Paul Sacher commissions: the Divertimento for strings and the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. Although both performances are appreciative of Bartok's delicate ear for instrumental timbre, they fall short in terms of precision and rhythmic thrust. An overall lack of tension dampens the second and fourth movements of the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta as well as the outer movements of the Divertimento, and while no one could deny the presence of mood and atmosphere, Bartok needs to be heard as well as felt: too much here is either under-played or obscured by the generous acoustic.
My advice is to hear Hetzel come what may, either on the first disc of the double-pack or on the separate CD comprising the two concertos. Fischer's The wooden prince is competitive––if you want the suite rather than the complete ballet––but for the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, the 1955 mid-price Reiner (RCA) or Solti (Decca) are both preferable, and Solti's disc also includes a good Divertimento.'