Search - Bela Bartok, Jenö Jandó :: Bartók: Piano Music, Vol. 2

Zoltan Kocsis on Philips is still the gold standard in Bartók's piano works, but Jenö Jandó's ongoing series for Naxos is an attractive proposition for anyone who wants to become familiar with the music through idiomatic performances at budget prices. In this second volume of the series, dance and dance-derived works are center stage, and Jandó plays with rhythmic drive, though he never allows the music's melodic charms to get lost in folk-based floor-stomping. His tone is never hard, and he captures the hushed stillness at the heart of the fourth movement of the Dance Suite, a wonderful work better known in its orchestral version. Bartók's genius transformed simple folk melodies into sophisticated art without losing their essence. A major breakthrough work in that regard is the Improvisations, whose eight movements are small miracles of adventurous keyboard writing. But then, everything on this disc is worth exploring. --Dan Davis