Bartók Ballet & Orchestral Music
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Béla Bartók
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: Nimbus
Magazine Review Date: 6/1990
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 64
Mastering:
Stereo
DDD
Catalogue Number: NI5229
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| (The) Miraculous Mandarin |
Béla Bartók, Composer
Adám Fischer, Conductor Béla Bartók, Composer Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra |
| Concerto for Orchestra |
Béla Bartók, Composer
Adám Fischer, Conductor Béla Bartók, Composer Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra |
Composer or Director: Béla Bartók
Label: Classics
Magazine Review Date: 6/1990
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 67
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 791106-2
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| Concerto for Orchestra |
Béla Bartók, Composer
Béla Bartók, Composer Hiroyuki Iwaki, Conductor Melbourne Symphony Orchestra |
Composer or Director: Béla Bartók
Label: Nimbus
Magazine Review Date: 6/1990
Media Format: Cassette
Media Runtime: 0
Mastering:
Stereo
DDD
Catalogue Number: NC5229
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| (The) Miraculous Mandarin |
Béla Bartók, Composer
Adám Fischer, Conductor Béla Bartók, Composer Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra |
| Concerto for Orchestra |
Béla Bartók, Composer
Adám Fischer, Conductor Béla Bartók, Composer Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra |
Composer or Director: Béla Bartók
Label: Classics
Magazine Review Date: 6/1990
Media Format: Cassette
Media Runtime: 0
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 791106-4
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| Concerto for Orchestra |
Béla Bartók, Composer
Béla Bartók, Composer Hiroyuki Iwaki, Conductor Melbourne Symphony Orchestra |
Author: Edward Seckerson
Three companies, each with the same idea. The Hungarian performances on Nimbus are by far the most interesting, but also the most wilful. Adam Fischer is his own worst enemy—a conductor of spirit (and no mean nose for atmosphere) who consistently overplays his hand. ''Echoes of Fricsay'' was my first thought as mysterious strings, heavy with significance, open the door on Bartok's introduction to the Concerto for Orchestra. The tremolandos bristle with anticipation, and it's not often you hear the violas sul ponticello in the eighth bar intensify the colour quite so dramatically. So far so good. A similar moodiness prevails in Fischer's account of the ''Elegia''—truly a 'vale of tears': the opening bars once again most beautiful, the atmosphere highly charged, a glazed look about the eyes for the high-flying oboe solo. But once again—and this is true throughout the reading—as each movement unfolds further, one becomes increasingly aware of the conductor through his insistent point-making, his tendency to play to the gallery, or in this case, the microphone. Or so it seems.
Hardly a bar goes by that isn't moulded, as it were, in Fischer's own image. To my mind he actually impedes and inhibits the natural fire and impetus of Bartok's sturdy allegros (both first and last movements struck me as over-reined in this respect; he certainly doesn't make life easy for his players) while the added relaxation he affords us in all the lyric diversions is invariably marred by excessive (indeed sometimes ham-fisted) rubato. Take, for instance, the lovely ''Intermezzo'' theme, returning undaunted and oblivious after being given the proverbial raspberry: Bartok ensures that it is lovelier and more serene than before by muting his strings and marking piano in contrast to the previous forte. Fischer selfconsciously underlines that contrast in precious pianissimo and one horribly mannered turn of phrase, mid-way through the tune. This, alas, is all too indicative. Yet, rather too much character than no character at all, as we'll see shortly with reference to the Mehta performance. If only Fischer could have curbed his excesses and concentrated more on context than effect, then passages like the evocative brass chorale trio of the ''couples'' movement (given here with gorgeously nostalgic horns) or the extraordinary 'reconstitution' of texture, pre-coda in the finale (stranger than I've ever heard it) would have made far more impact.
Impact is not lacking in the accompanying Miraculous Mandarin, though Fischer's opening cityscape is really too emphatic, too literal, to be truly alarming. Where he does score, as ever, is on atmosphere, the first of the enticing clarinet solos emerging from some seedy back alley through a shudder of string tremolando—space, isolation and menace conspiring to chilling effect. Again, though, why the need to paw so over already explicit phrases: the momentous entrance of the Mandarin (and incidentally, I don't hear the pentatonic trombones clearly in the preceding build-up) is grotesquely miscalculated—elastically rhetorical with almost comic tromboneglissandos. As the girl begins her enticement, Fischer's halting rubato simply comes between us and the raw sensuality of the music. I do, however, greatly approve of the wild (and yes, excessive) assault of percussion at the start of the chase, the craggy trombones, the generally coarse-cut nature of the Hungarian sound. Their woodwinds are a highly personable team throughout this disc; while the strings (frequently unlovely, even scrappy, in the Concerto) score for me over the Berlin Philharmonic with their honest and earthily home-spun responses.
Much of that feeling has of course to do with Mehta in his slick but uneventful Sony Classical disc. Beautifully presented, one might say, but what about the content? His Concerto is very much the out-and-out showpiece, superbly delivered, but under-characterized. One begins to wonder if the woodwinds are not perhaps too cultivated, something of a fashion parade in their two-by-two games. And whatever happened to the ''Elegia's'' outrage (the opening pages are seductive, almost soothing in their plush texturing) or the finale's life-asserting Magyar spirit? The neo-baroque fugue here is frightfully civilized, a very long way indeed from Bartok's grass-roots. Which all goes to show that an abundance of style and fabulous sonority from one of the world's great orchestras simply isn't enough. Mehta's Mandarin is never dangerous. Not one note is misplaced, nowhere can one fault his pacing or sense of balance, but where is the anxiety, the ugliness, and above all the decadence, of this sordid little scenario? I should point out that Sony Classical adopt a markedly different sound picture for each of the scores. The Mandarin (Jesus-Christus Kirche) is the more immediate, the more obviously 'engineered' with detail like piano and percussion peaking rather unnaturally; the Concerto (Philharmonie) is more 'open' (strings a touch too recessed for my taste, timpani unconvincing in perspective). By the way, it is a pity that no one appears to have spotted the cut-reverberation at the end of the first movement of the Concerto?
Which leaves the Virgin Classics release, offering at least one major advantage over the others in the shape of a completeMiraculous Mandarin. And here I would say that Hiroyuki Iwaki's problem is quite the reverse of Mehta's in that his very competent Melbourne orchestra is clearly not equipped with the malleability and imagination necessary to reveal dimensions beyond the notes in the shadows and reflections. Which of course makes for limitations in the characterization. Nothing is ever quite edgy or seductive or insinuating enough. Admittedly, Iwaki himself must entirely shoulder the blame for rushing ineffectually through the Mandarin's menacing appearance in the doorway, and he certainly doesn't sound to be pushing his players hard enough in the ripping fugal entries of the chase. The final minutes of the full score (lost, of course, from the suite) can never entirely fail—Bartok's grisly special effects are more or less written into his supernatural orchestrations. Even so, the music is potentially far more shocking than this performance would suggest. I refer you to Abbado (DG). And in the Concerto I recommend Fricsay (DG), Reiner (RCA), or Solti (Decca). Iwaki and his orchestra only really come alive in the finale where their vigour and at long last a degree of risk-taking affords us a glimpse of what might have been.'
Hardly a bar goes by that isn't moulded, as it were, in Fischer's own image. To my mind he actually impedes and inhibits the natural fire and impetus of Bartok's sturdy allegros (both first and last movements struck me as over-reined in this respect; he certainly doesn't make life easy for his players) while the added relaxation he affords us in all the lyric diversions is invariably marred by excessive (indeed sometimes ham-fisted) rubato. Take, for instance, the lovely ''Intermezzo'' theme, returning undaunted and oblivious after being given the proverbial raspberry: Bartok ensures that it is lovelier and more serene than before by muting his strings and marking piano in contrast to the previous forte. Fischer selfconsciously underlines that contrast in precious pianissimo and one horribly mannered turn of phrase, mid-way through the tune. This, alas, is all too indicative. Yet, rather too much character than no character at all, as we'll see shortly with reference to the Mehta performance. If only Fischer could have curbed his excesses and concentrated more on context than effect, then passages like the evocative brass chorale trio of the ''couples'' movement (given here with gorgeously nostalgic horns) or the extraordinary 'reconstitution' of texture, pre-coda in the finale (stranger than I've ever heard it) would have made far more impact.
Impact is not lacking in the accompanying Miraculous Mandarin, though Fischer's opening cityscape is really too emphatic, too literal, to be truly alarming. Where he does score, as ever, is on atmosphere, the first of the enticing clarinet solos emerging from some seedy back alley through a shudder of string tremolando—space, isolation and menace conspiring to chilling effect. Again, though, why the need to paw so over already explicit phrases: the momentous entrance of the Mandarin (and incidentally, I don't hear the pentatonic trombones clearly in the preceding build-up) is grotesquely miscalculated—elastically rhetorical with almost comic trombone
Much of that feeling has of course to do with Mehta in his slick but uneventful Sony Classical disc. Beautifully presented, one might say, but what about the content? His Concerto is very much the out-and-out showpiece, superbly delivered, but under-characterized. One begins to wonder if the woodwinds are not perhaps too cultivated, something of a fashion parade in their two-by-two games. And whatever happened to the ''Elegia's'' outrage (the opening pages are seductive, almost soothing in their plush texturing) or the finale's life-asserting Magyar spirit? The neo-baroque fugue here is frightfully civilized, a very long way indeed from Bartok's grass-roots. Which all goes to show that an abundance of style and fabulous sonority from one of the world's great orchestras simply isn't enough. Mehta's Mandarin is never dangerous. Not one note is misplaced, nowhere can one fault his pacing or sense of balance, but where is the anxiety, the ugliness, and above all the decadence, of this sordid little scenario? I should point out that Sony Classical adopt a markedly different sound picture for each of the scores. The Mandarin (Jesus-Christus Kirche) is the more immediate, the more obviously 'engineered' with detail like piano and percussion peaking rather unnaturally; the Concerto (Philharmonie) is more 'open' (strings a touch too recessed for my taste, timpani unconvincing in perspective). By the way, it is a pity that no one appears to have spotted the cut-reverberation at the end of the first movement of the Concerto?
Which leaves the Virgin Classics release, offering at least one major advantage over the others in the shape of a complete
Bartók Orchestral Works
Bartók Ballet & Orchestral Music
Bartók Orchestral Works
Bartók Ballet & Orchestral Music
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