Customer Reviews

Béla Bartók: Divertimento / Dance Suite / Hungarian Sketches / Two Pictures - Chicago Symphony Orchestra / Pierre Boulez

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This disc of four Bartok pieces, performed by Pierre Boulez and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, is a very accessible introduction to this iconoclastic twentieth century composer. The first work, "Dance Suite," is just about as jovial and carefree as Bartok gets. "Two Pictures" initially paints a serene and almost pastoral picture, then turns more haunting. "Hungarian Sketches" is next and it is one of my favorite Barotk compositions. This recording was my third version -- the first two being Antal Dorati's on Mercury Living Presence and Fritz Reiner's on RCA Living Stereo. It is particularly fun to compare this Boulez "Hungarian Sketches" to the Reiner one as they were both recorded by the Chicago Symphony, yet nearly forty years apart. It is safe to say the C.S.O. owned this piece in both decades. The Boulez disc ends with Bartok's "Divertimento," the album's longest and most austere composition. Compared to other Bartok CDs I have, this title is fairly easy listening, but don't let that fool you because "Divertimento/Dance Suite" is incredible, creative, challenging classical music.

I own all of the Bartok recordings with Pierre Boulez. They are all fantastic and if you're a Bartok fan, then they're worth your time. This recording "Divertimento, Dance Suite, etc.," is a fine addition to the series. "Divertimento" written for string orchestra is marvelously played by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (who have a great history Bartok dating back to Georg Solti and Fritz Reiner). This piece ("Divertimento") is unlike anything I've heard from Bartok. I only own two versions of this piece Boulez and Solti. I prefer Boulez's performance for the simple fact that he lays the structure of the piece right out in front of you and he achieves remarkable clarity, whereas, Solti's reading is much more bombastic, which I guess is personal preference for some, but bombast for it's own sake doesn't always work, especially for Bartok's music.

Another Bartok favorite of mine, "Hungarian Sketches," is played beautifully here. Boulez doesn't wash away my impressions of Fritz Reiner, but he does a fantastic job of keeping this lively score afloat. "Dance Suite" and "Two Pictures" are also played with great conviction.

Boulez has proven with his Bartok series that he's a master of this repertoire. His whole Bartok series can now be purchased in an 8-CD set:

Pierre Boulez Conducts Bartók

I bought all of the Bartok/Boulez recordings before Deutsche Grammophon put out this box set, but if you're a collector and can find the individual releases cheaper than the box set, then go for it. They will be hard to find one day.

If I'm not mistaken, this is the only installment of Boulez's Bartok cycle for DG that contains no major work, unless you count the genial Divertimento for strings from 1939. Everything else comes in bits and pieces. The Dance Suite offers energetic homage to folk materials from Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and oddly enough, Arab North Africa. The more negligible pieces on this CD are the Two Images, which sound like castoffs from The Wooden Prince, and the Hungarian Sketches, which are simple orchestrations of even simpler piano miniatures.

For such a fragmented colleciton to work requires a burst of energy and elan. Sadly, they are noticeably missing from Boulez's straight-faced, sometimes bland performances, which date from 1992 and 1993 in Chicago. I can see why DG waited to publish these recordings until 1996, but they would have shown off better as fillers to major works. As they stand, they are pleasant enough musically, but I've heard much more committed readings of each piece elsewhere. Maybe the more infectious and warmer Ivan Fischer recordings on Philips would be a better alternative.

Is there such a thing as "light" Bartok? Certainly not in the same sense that there is light Shostakovich, but especially in his piano music written for young people, there is a far more approachable Bartok than found in such hard-bitten modernist works as the violin sonatas, the Fourth String Quartet, or the Miraculous Mandarin. The four pieces on this disc represent orchestral Bartok at his most approachable. And in the Divertimento, the finest of these pieces, there is even some of the dry humor and playfulness that mark the Concerto for Orchestra, Bartok's most popular work.

I had come to think of the understated Deux Images as the negligible product of an uncharacteristic period of Debussian influence, but by placing it next to the Hungarian Sketches and the Dance Suite, Boulez points up its importance as an early vehicle through which Bartok found his folk-musical roots.

The Hungarian Sketches are based directly on some of those piano pieces for children mentioned earlier and so has an easy, populist air about it that is somehow more disarming than the studied primitivism of the Dance Suite. But even here, Boulez manages to underscore the colorful orchestration and brash rhythms to the music's great advantage. Though not my favorite Bartok, the Dance Suite is more beguiling than usual in Boulez's hands.

And then there is the Divertimento, Bartok at his most artless, having discovered in his last years the art that conceals art. This immediately appealing music is the perfect capstone to the recording, played with fervor and finesse by the Chicago strings. An unusual and unusually enjoyable program, perfectly executed.