Customer Reviews

Bartok: Concerto for orchestra / Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is one of the first recordings Bernstein made as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic. Though he was never able, in my opinion, to get a consistent level in each recording as what say George Szell and his Clevelanders, this recordings is well done. The recorded sound is excellent. The concerto was recorded at the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn. The Strings, Percussion, and Celesta is probably the best recording available today. The playing is very precise, even more than Boulez's recording with the CSO. For anyone who enjoys this music, buy it today!

Bernstein was a great Bartok conductor. The music sizzles and becomes alive with an intensity that grips the listener. These towering monuments of 20th music by one of the greatest composers of the millenium are conducted with a wide range of expression, color, and emotional power by one of the great condutors of the century-- This CD is a must for the serious listener.

It's odd that Bernstein, a champion of tonal modernism, didn't feel closer to Bartok. In his later career, after the mid-Sixties, he recorded nothing of his music. These two rollicking recordings from 1959 (Concerto for Orchestra) and 1961 (Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta) are more heart-on-sleeve than any other I've heard. The often elusive emotions and cool distancing one feels in the Concerto for Orchestra, usually played for shallow virtuosity, here turn into fiery extroversion, wit, and bumptiousness. The piece becomes first cousin to Petrushka. The NY Phil. sounds glorious and committed; the sonics are only limited in the loudest climaxes, when things get a bit screechy. Bartok didn't want to be held close to anyone's bosom, but if you want to anyway, this is the performance for you. (One wonders, by the way, if the young LB was present when his mentor Koussevitzky premiered the work in Boston.)

The MFSP&C is an intricate puzzle piece that benefits from precise, even analytical conducting a la Boulez. Bernstein has no interest in that--the opening hollow tones of the strings in canon are romantically shaped for eerie loneliness. The two fast movement are played with thrilling extroversion, the paino quite close and the percussion flailing away. You'd have to have a heart of stone to resist--although the composer might well have.

My first copy of this was on wax, the second on a hissy cassette and the 3rd on an older CD (now ripped to an iPod). 50 years of bliss and I'm still blown away every time I hear it. And was spoiled for the live performance I saw recently. I tried to make allowances for how well I know the recording and kept reminding myself that what I was about to hear would not be a replication, nor should a conductor and orchestra try for such. But the performance was a let down and felt almost mechanical in comparison.

I won't insult that orchestra by naming it, because they played a wonderful Shostakovich piece before, but the depth, focus and intensity of this recording is amazing. (Of course I've always liked Berstein's unashamedly emotional approach.) And given 1959 recording technology, the sound quality is (to me) amazing. Maybe there's still something to the analog warmth people still debate, but in any case, it sounds great today. And one of my joys is playing it for people who've never heard it (and often never heard of Bartok) when we're going to be riding in my car for over an hour. Many sharp intakes of breath and exclamations I won't quote here often follow the titanic conclusion.

If you're a Bartok afficianado and don't have this, you want it. If you're into the period and don't have it, you need it! And if you know nothing about either, it's not too late for you.....

PS: I came to the site to get the link because yesterday was his birthday. facebook friends were discussing his work and I wondered if the recording was still available so I could recommend it. The 2nd and 3rd Piano Concertos were also being highly lauded, and I picked up the factoid that Bartok spoke at least 14 languages (besides his universal, deep grasp of music!).

Bernstein and the New Yorkers have an authentic feel for the music - the playing is highly spirited and earthy. This is the best recording of the Concerto I've heard. Totally underrated, and not well known, for some reason.

If you don't listen to, and review, serious music for a living, comparing and contrasting tens of versions of each major composition--and how many can do that?--you invariably lock into your favorite recording of any giving piece. This tends to "groove" your ears and musical soul. For almost 50 years, the gold standard for this Concerto has been Reiner and the Chicago, and for listeners of my age--I've had the Reiner for 30 years--we have worn our vinyl RCAs flat in our love for this music. Reiner was Bartok's friend from their student in Budapest and later became the powerful proponent--and authoritative interpreter--of Bartok's work.

One thing jazz musicians who cross over into classical music (Benny Goodman, Wynton Marsalis), or vice versa (Andre Previn), teach us is that, for ANY music, Ellington has the last word: "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing." All great conductors swing. (Listen to how Reiner swings this concerto, or John Barbirolli swings--yes, swings--the Mahler 9th, and your ears will change forever.) Bernstein, who knew jazz idiom intimately, almost intuitively, usually swings with the best. But in this early recording, he mostly plods, with a metronomic mediocrity that defies any expectation.

Bernstein had clearly listened to, and adopted aspects of, Reiner's authoritative version--in passages of the first and fifth movement, tempi and section articulation seem to duplicate Reiner's, note for note. (I have a recollection, which I cannot document, that Reiner played the Concero according to, or very close to, the timings expressly prescribed by the meticulous Bartok.) I recognize that the flaw may be my ears and what they're accustomed to, but for me, with few exceptions, the Bernstein drags throughout and, as such, sounds lackluster and ponderous.

The main exception is in the presto finale, which is played at an absolutely blistering pace and is quite stirring. As I listened, I imagined the bows of the string players beginning to smoke, then bursting into flames, then entire string sections igniting. That hot. These are Bernstein's most impressive moments on this disc--and he also brings the orchestra nicely to a crescendo, always a strongpoint for melodramatic Lenny.

The Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste is a packaging bonus, however, which in the era of the CD, has become the standard coupling for the Concerto. The Music for Strings is played, to my mind and ears, to a much higher standard.

In all, however, I would pass on this CD and opt for the Reiner. Even if you're collecting Bartok, many superior recordings (particularly if you do not HAVE to have digital) of this music--including the Antal Dorati and Ferenc Fricsay--remain in the catalogue at a low budget price.