Search - Bela Bartok, Michael Gielen, SWF Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden :: Bartók: Four Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 12; Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 1; Music for Strings, Percussion and

Suavely played, high-profile Bartok, but not all the music i

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 11/08/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This CD accomplihses the difficult feat by making a fine show of inferior music. To a musicologist, both the early Four Pieces for Orchestra Op. 12 and the unfinished Violin Concerto #1 are transition pieces -- Bartok was throwing off the influence of Debussy and Strauss to find his own voice. Much of the time, these works feel neither here nor there, but Gielen hasn't gotten that word. He plays them with intense conviction yet also a romantic heart, avoiding the harsh, cold style of Boulez, whose x-rays of Bartok don't fit my sympathies.



One can see why these performances were televized in 2003 (although not released on CD until 2006 by Hanssler). Christian Ostertag, a violinist unknown to me, is persuasive in the concerto, falling in line with Gielen's air of romance (the work was meant as a protrait of a Hungarian violinist that Bartok fell madly in love with). There's a rapt sweetness about the first movement; the angularity of the second movement's opening theme is considerably softened.



Which brings us to the only mature masterpiece on the program, the 1937 Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta. As such, it doesn't suffer from a lack of great performances, my favorites being Harnoncourt (RCA/BMG), Levine (DG) and Bernstein (Sony). I doubted whether Gielen and his SWR SO of Baden-Baden could compete on that level, but I knew the conductor would have something to say. Bartok applied the utmost intellectual rigor to this work and asks for very specific things from the performers, down to an exact seating chart. For me, the best accounts ignore the intellectual aspects and deliver a directly emotional eperience.



Gielen tursn out to be almost romantic in his approach, so the emotion is there. His is the most soft-grained, least hectic account I've ever heard. Boulez's analytic touch is nowhere in sight. Gielen's phrasing is flexible and yielding, which I also admire. The percussive elemnts are subdued, which isn't necessarily to the good. In all, you'll never hear a reading quite like this one. The effect is all the more attractive because of the clear, inviting sonics. My only caveat is the the orchestra's lower strings are a bit thin and buzzy."