Schwarz turns in a lithe and energetic Miraculous Mandarin, but he isn't about to keep you awake at nights; this is not the stuff of which nightmares are made. In general, I'd say he was far too circumspect in his projection of the score's lurid histrionics: the grubby sex and violence, the unsettling supernaturalisms. One really needs to live a little more dangerously with this piece. From the very outset, his teeming metropolis is busy but unthreatening; Bartok's whirring strings and honking woodwinds and brass don't rend the air as they can and must, the crucial organ entry (at 00'50'') should, but doesn't, send shivers of apprehension through from one's feet. The highly-wrought Bartokian string writing a page or two later (1'24''), after the tumult has subsided, is far too civilized: bows must dig much deeper here.
Essentially, Schwarz and his excellent Seattle orchestra could have afforded to sharpen, underline, even labour, the characterization from time to time. We are dealing here with the grotesque, the unspeakable, where atmosphere and colour is all. Surely, for instance, he and his admirable solo clarinet could have created more space for themselves in and around those stiflingly intense solos. I don't feel the sinister undercurrents here; the aggression festering just beneath the surface. Schwarz sounds a trifle shy of the eroticism, too. How much more can be made of those sighing, insinuating string phrases as the girl begins her bid to out-dance Salome. Schwarz kicks into the ensuing 'chase' with percussion duly unreined, but again the string fugato is sturdy rather than scorching (one doesn't sense players at the limit of possibility—essential at this point), and once into the harrowing final minutes of the ballet (the most astounding music in the score—I find it difficult to return to the suite these days) the catalogue of explicit brutality somehow doesn't transcend the printed page. One really shouldn't be conscious of how Bartok achieves his chilling effects: take that extraordinary mire of writhing glissandos from oboe, cor anglais, timpani and trombones as the three thugs attempt to hang the Mandarin from the light fitting. In his still unbeatable DG version, Claudio Abbado conjours sonorities so unearthly, so unorchestral (simply by virtue of subtle balancing) as to sound almost synthesized, unreal. His is still the version to have.
Hary Janos finds a relaxed and generous Schwarz with strings and horns flowering nicely in the wake of the opening 'sneeze'; indeed, all the romantic interest is warmly diverting with exceptionally stylish solo wind playing. As for the humour, poor Napoleon's humiliation is properly absurd, cringing saxophone, tambourine and bass drum thwacks afforded a larger-than-life presence (typically vivid Delos sound). So is the cimbalom—rather too much of it, I fear, in the catchy Intermezzo where its somewhat intrusive clatter far exceeds the touch of local colour implied. There is still no performance in my book that can hold a candle to the Kertesz/LSO recording on Decca (nla—an urgent reissue candidate, surely) but looking to current contenders, both Fricsay (DG) and Tennstedt (EMI) are cut of a coarser and more idiomatic cloth than Schwarz, good as he is. Much the same might be said of the Dances from Galanta, though these Seattle players can prove gipsies-at-heart when they've a mind to.'