Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

Geza Anda, Ferenc Fricsay, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra – Bartok – The 3 Piano Concertos (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:18:47 minutes | 806 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Pristine Classical

At very long last we have a worthy recording of the Bartok Second Concerto, a work whose previous interpreters (including the admirable Andor Foldes, whose performance received Bartok’s own blessing) have all suffered from recording qualities ranging from indifferent to abysmal. This will be valuable in helping to spread a knowledge of an important work in Bartok’s output which is rarely heard in the concert hall, probably because of the ferocious difficulty of the solo part – Bartok seems to have had in mind huge hands with permanent built-in octave and thirds mechanisms. The music does not deserve this neglect, and though it is “tougher” in idiom than the more mellow Third Concerto it has in fact had a consistently successful reception ever since its first performance (by the composer) in 1933. A bravura, lithe work, it abounds in motor energy and in contrapuntal vigour and resource (much of the material of the first movement – which is played entirely without the strings – reappears in inversion, or even in retrograde inversion, in the finale): the central part of the Adagio is a brilliantly fantastic delicate scherzo which looks forward to the Sonata for two pianos and percussion. Soloist and orchestra co-operate in exemplary fashion in a performance remarkable for its precision of ensemble, clarity and exactness of detail: Gcxa Anda in pardcular is to be congratulated for the way he romps through all the difficulties. The recording is excellent, the stereo even better than the mono.
— L. S. The Gramophone, May 1961 – excerpt, review of DGG UP issue of Concertos 2 & 3
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