These performances were among the finest in Hungaroton's Bartok Complete Edition and they are well worth promoting to CD. There is a wiry intensity in Kremer's tone which suits these sonatas admirably and which goes well with the close recorded sound. Smirnov is at one with him in flexibility and range of colour. They combine with almost frightening panache in the violent finale of the First Sonata and their concentration holds the attention through some of the weirdest chromatic contortions. Bartok ever indulged in (he was on the threshold of a crisis which was to tame, or at least rationalize, such excesses).
Janos Karpati's informative sleeve-note is reprinted, but without the valuable photographs, facsimiles and musical examples of the original LP.'