Chatting briefly to Nikolaus Harnoncourt about this Bartók project a year or so ago I ran some names past him of respected older-generation Bartók conductors. Only one registered with any enthus- iasm, and that was Ferenc Fricsay. And yet Harnoncourt’s Bartók – broader, weightier and more stylised – is quite different from Fricsay’s.

The current COE programme is dominated by a performance of the Divertimento that is typically responsive to the distinctive contours of Bartók’s melodic writing. Try from bar 11 (1'23") into the molto adagio second movement where pairs of limpid slurred quavers have a blanched, trance-like quality. Really effective, though certain other gestures seem a tad exaggerated. The dramatic bulges to the solo string line at 5'08" into the first movement, for one, and the way Harnoncourt accelerates at the climax of the second movement (from around 5'15") – surely rather more than poco stringendo. Tempi are often broader than those marked (the molto adagio’s opening falls short of the prescribed quaver=88) though the music never actually sounds slow. Other-worldly perhaps, but not slow. Comparing Harnoncourt with Solti’s newly reissued Chicago Symphony recording finds the fêted Hungarian closer to the book in terms of tempo and yet there’s a busy, all-purpose feel to Solti’s performance that, good as it is, throws Harnoncourt’s rustically rumbustious alternative into a favourable light. Thomas Zehetmair’s vital 1998 recording with Camerata Bern on ECM comes closer to Harnoncourt’s aesthetic.

As ever with Harnoncourt, colour and character overflow from virtually every bar. The finale’s powerful inner voices are coaxed to the fore and there’s the entertaining pizzicato mock-minuet towards the end of the piece (from 6'43" into the third movement) where this master of Strauss’s Pizzicato Polka makes maximum capital of a hilarious musical joke. The gutsy recording marks effective definitions between soli and tutti and viewed overall I’d challenge anyone to find a more communicative Bartók Divertimento on disc.

Music for strings, percussion and celesta, a work very close to Harnoncourt’s heart, isn’t quite as consistent. The opening Andante tranquillo is slower than we’re used to (Bartók prescribes 6'30", Harnoncourt stretches to 9'11") but the tempo is skilfully sustained, with immaculate interweaving voices and a principal climax that has considerable impact. It’s soaked in atmosphere, more reminiscent than ever before of Beethoven’s Op 131. The closing moments, where the celesta twinkles against a chilly sea of high string tone, are remarkably effective. The allegro second movement is keen and mostly precise, the adagio a haunting essay in blended sonorities, very ‘Harnoncourt’ in its close attention to Bartók’s aurally stimulating scoring. As a vivid representation of Bartók’s sound world you won’t find better though the finale might have benefited from a couple of extra rehearsals. A few tiny falls from perfection betray the performance’s live provenance, and why such a long pause before the return of the work’s first theme (at 3'48")? Mravinsky’s white-hot live recording from Leningrad also has its hiccups though his coupling (a none-too-memorable Concerto for Orchestra under György Lehel) is nowhere near as good as Harnoncourt’s Divertimento.

Every Harnoncourt performance is an education, and this is no exception. Solti is, I suppose, a safer, more ‘central’ bet and an earlier, harder-edged Chicago Music for strings, percussion and celesta under Fritz Reiner is still among the most thrilling on disc; but when it comes to imag-ination and rich interpretative flavouring Harnoncourt is, as ever, in a class of his own.