I've been trying to imagine what might have been the planning underlying this rather curious assemblage of items—a work for string orchestra, a wind sextet, and a make-weight of Bartok's own salon-orchestra arrangements of his most popular set of dances: the sleeve-note's thesis of the composers' nostalgia for the folk-music they had heard in their early days amounts to no more than proclaiming that there is a B in both. Perhaps the idea was to demonstrate that Bartok at 58, and Janacek at 70, could write music bubbling with the same youthful vitality as is shown by the 26-strong conductorless New York ensemble pictured on the cover (scarcely and looking old enough to have been founding members when it was established in 1972).
The Divertimento (each movement of which is taken slightly slower than by the Liszt Chamber Orchestra on Hungaroton) is given a committed and warm-hearted performance, though there is some feeling that they are trying a bit too hard to make every point. The first movement is more vehement and intense; the Molto adagio does not quite capture the mysterious sense of repressed menace so well conveyed by Rolla; and the finale's humour would have emerged more happily had it been less highly pressurized. The orchestra's strong rhythmic accentuation pays dividends in the ''Polka'' of the Romanian folkdances, which thereby acquires a heightened exotic flavour.
The Orpheus wind-players' conception of the Janacek is more delicate and intimate than that of their Los Angeles/Delos rivals; and in this they are helped by a horn with a less wide-bore tone and by a recording which is lighter in general and which produces a more equal instrumental blend. The whole thing has an engaging air of freshness and spontaneity in its treatment of Janacek's quirkily unexpected juxtapositions.'