An enticing package: the young Bartok, not yet 30, pre and post Bluebeard. Indeed, the first of his Four Pieces, written just one year after his only opera, suggests that Bluebeard's enchanted garden has bloomed again. Voluptuous is the word, the intoxication of the late, new-vogue romantics—not least, of course, the French—is in every shimmering line. The untamed Scherzo brings us closer to Mahler in its folk-dancing madness and there is Mahler, too, in the tainted waltz of the ''Intermezzo'' and the unsettling harmonic collision of the concluding ''Marcia funebre''. Conlon and his fine Rotterdam orchestra are alive to all these allusions; they have the measure of the style—not too civilized, but infinitely subtle—and if I were to carp at all I would only suggest that in general they might perhaps have pushed the wilder extremes still further. This is plainly an orchestra more than well equipped to live dangerously: its sturdy, full-bodied woodwinds, from which I would single out marvellously oily clarinets, have all the requisite cutting-edge for Bartok's elemental flights of folklore; indeed, it's the orchestra's dark-hewn character that pays off time and again here. In the first of the Two Pictures, ''In full flower'', the emphasis is very much on dark, shifting colours—a subterranean nature world, the shape of Bluebeard to come.
By far the most memorable music, though, is enshrined in the nine or so minutes of the first Portrait. Here Pierre Amoyal leads the glowing polyphonic weave heavenward with pure tone and the securest intonation. The caustic intrusion of ''One grotesque'', which follows, is all it should be, and once again I am struck by what would seem to be an uncanny premonition of Walton's sarcastic voice—harmony, instrumental colour (the shrill trumpet and high-pitched woodwind combination) could mislead anyone on a blind testing.
A thoughtful collection, then, well presented in transparent, open sound—though I still favour marginally less of an 'overview' than Erato give us, particularly with regard to the strings which are to my ears just a touch too recessed.'