Béla Bartók (1881-1945): The Miraculous Mandarin, Op. 19, BB 82
Béla Bartók (1881-1945): Violin Concerto No. 2, BB 117

From the whirling and snarling opening to the The Miraculous Mandarin 'pantomime', one can tell this will be a performance that does not pull any punches in this remarkable score. The coupling, a generous and warm reading of the later Violin Concerto No. 2, creates a wonderful contrast in a program that is infrequently replicated on record. It presents two guiding forces in his composing life, the dissonant, shabby ugliness of much of post-WWI life (Mandarin), and in the concerto the underlying pervading nostalgia and love of homeland just prior to being forced by the political environment in Hungary to move to the United States.

This is the full version of the pantomime, with chorus, instead of the more frequently performed suite that itself includes approximately two thirds of the full score. It is played with appropriate brutality, alternating often with extreme beauty, by the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, and conducted with energy and drive by an acknowledged expert on central and eastern European 20th century music, conductor Michael Gielen. I have heard Gielen conduct music from several periods, back to Beethoven, and through the Romantic era, Mahler and Bruckner, but have always felt him to be particularly well suited to the 20th century, whether the atonal works of Schoenberg or the great creations of Bartok, Janacek, Hindemith et al. He has the clinical sense to bring out the separate strands of orchestral texture, with the ability to allow the warm emotional moments to breath.

These are both live recordings from the Musikverein in Vienna in the 1990's, and every now and again I hear a little audience noise, but that added to my sense of enjoyment of the occasion. The recording quality I find overall to be excellent, though the violin soloist feels a little more distant than I am used to in some competing studio recordings, where highlighting the soloist is more common. The dynamic range of the scores are well captured. In the Miraculous Mandarin the Viennese orchestra provide a winning combination of silky string tone and brutal brass, it made me frequently think of the music of Alban Berg at times, not so much in the Schoenbergian atonality but the combination of an aching sadness and sense of defeat with the brutality of 'everyday' life as displayed in the universe of the piece.

When the Violin Concerto comes around, I loved the gentle strumming of strings/harp at the start, allowing the soloist to gradually transform the mood to the initial climax, the melody with all those hallmarks of Bartók. It really could not be any other composer.

Soloist Ernst Kovacic traverses the many switches in mood with great skill, and in the moving slow middle movement provides expressive cantabile playing. It is a most beautiful piece, and must be great fun to play.

I enjoyed this release a great deal and plan to return to it outside of the context of a review. Recommended.