Hard on the heels of Sir Georg Solti's new Decca recording of Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta comes Levine with the same orchestra. Almost at once the very same strings sound fatter, plusher and more urbane under Levine's direction. Add to that the scrutiny of DG's uncompromisingly immediate, rather overbearing sound—one wants to step back from it, allow some air and light into the texture: the tuttis vibrate impressively (all voices rising to a sonorous first movement climax), but there is also a tendency to thickness and saturation. Then again the recording only serves to underline the somewhat generalized gloss and brilliance of Levine's reading. It is exciting (bows fly and rosin burns in the second movement—the weight, cut and thrust, particularly through Bartok's penetrating bass lines, is invigorating), it is atmospheric—theatrically so in the dissipating threads of sound at the close of the first movement or the elusive middle section of the third with its whispy glissandos and eerie celeste.
But something of the music's essential identity is missing: I'm talking now of course about national identity. Solti's rhythms are the very essence of Hungarian folk-dance (lean, hungry, earthy, as opposed to slickly virtuosic), and where Bartok effects soulful transformation (as in the return of his germinal fugue-theme mid-way through the finale), Solti conveys a grass-roots intensity. So, too, of course, does the incomparable Fritz Reiner in his celebrated reading on RCA (coupled like the Levine). Listen to him or Solti in that lush transformation (rustic dance tune turned fervent hymn), an expansive moment just prior to the close. By comparison, Levine does little more than take us through the motions, albeit efficiently (though the passage leading us there—from the snap-pizzicato at 5'56''—is inexplicably messy).
His Concerto for Orchestra (a more open, though still far from unsynthetic sound) is yet another in a long line of classy, highly accomplished readings to lack that certain something. A great deal of care has been exercised on detail. Levine coaxes a suitably elusive 'far-away' complexion from his flutes and trumpets in the introduction; Bartok's lyrical reveries are possessed of a poetic half-remembered quality. Fruity bassoons steal the show in a lively game of the couples, grave dusky string basses (the perfect colour) lay the foundations for an ''Elegia'' duly distressed, Levine's trombones couldn't be ruder in their fourth movement interruption (incidentally, for once you really feel the decisive tam-tam resonance), while the finale (at a strong viable tempo) flexes plenty of muscle, particularly splendid in the bustling Petrushka-like arrival of the trumpet tune. The final paean of trumpets (brilliantly arrived at from an uncommonly atmospheric gathering of raw matter just prior to the coda) tingles with excitement. And yet, for all its excellence, it isn't Reiner or Fricsay (DG mono—poor sound but a collector's item). Who's to say why—somehow, I suppose, it's in the blood.'