Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra; Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta – review
Marin Alsop has already recorded Bartók’s two ballet scores, The Miraculous Mandarin and The Wooden Prince, as well as his only opera, Bluebeard’s Castle, for Naxos, with the Bournemouth Symphony. But perhaps it’s appropriate that she should record his best known orchestral work, the Concerto for Orchestra, with the Baltimore Symphony, for the work was written for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which first performed it in 1944. In its bold, brightly coloured gestures, quite unlike anything else in Bartók’s output, the music seems to have been conceived with the upfront style of American orchestral playing in mind. But, though it is immaculately played, Alsop’s performance doesn’t quite have the presence and brilliance of the classic recordings already in the catalogue, such as Ivan Fischer’s (on Philips) and Georg Solti’s (on Decca). Her account of the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, though, is very impressive, controlled and pungent, albeit without quite the expressionist edge that the music sometimes needs.
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