Bartók: The Piano Concertos / Anda, Fricsay, Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
These classic performances were probably the first recordings of the Bartók Piano Concertos that many of us owned, and they probably put the music on the international map once and for all. Both Ferenc Fricsay and Géza Anda, compatriots of the composer, spared no effort in bringing this music to the widest possible public; and their recordings are not only important for this reason, but they have also withstood the test of time very well indeed. They treat these pieces as straightforward, Romantic piano concertos of the Lisztian "bravura" school, which in many respects they are. Later performances have explored the music's modernity more probingly, but that lessens neither the validity of this approach nor the pleasure of the result. --David Hurwitz

Bartók: The Piano Concertos / Anda, Fricsay, Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin, Music, Bela Bartok, Ferenc Fricsay, Berliner Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester, Géza Anda, Classical, Classical Composers, Classical Music, Concerto, Piano Concerto

Average customer rating:

JUST RIGHT

Sorry, I don't hear greatness on this CD

Top notch recordings!

precious document.

The Benchmark Bartok Concerto Set

Bartók: The Piano Concertos / Anda, Fricsay, Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin

Manufacturer: Deutsche Grammophon
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Bartók, Béla | ( B ) | Featured Composers, A-Z | Classical | Styles | Music
General | Concertos | Forms & Genres | Classical | Styles | Music
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General | Classical | Styles | Music
Deutsche Grammophon: Music | Specialty Stores | Music
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ASIN: B000001GPW
Release Date: 1996-01-23

Tracks:

Konzert fvier und Orchester Nr.1: Allegro moderato - Allegro
Konzert fvier und Orchester Nr.1: Andante
Konzert fvier und Orchester Nr.1: Allegro molto
Konzert fvier und Orchester Nr.2: Allegro
Konzert fvier und Orchester Nr.2: Adagio-Presto-Adagio
Konzert fvier und Orchester Nr.2: Allegro molto
Konzert fvier und Orchester Nr.3: Allegretto
Konzert fvier und Orchester Nr.3: Adagio religioso
Konzert fvier und Orchester Nr.3: Allegro vivace

Amazon.com

These classic performances were probably the first recordings of the Bartók Piano Concertos that many of us owned, and they probably put the music on the international map once and for all. Both Ferenc Fricsay and Géza Anda, compatriots of the composer, spared no effort in bringing this music to the widest possible public; and their recordings are not only important for this reason, but they have also withstood the test of time very well indeed. They treat these pieces as straightforward, Romantic piano concertos of the Lisztian "bravura" school, which in many respects they are. Later performances have explored the music's modernity more probingly, but that lessens neither the validity of this approach nor the pleasure of the result. --David Hurwitz

Customer Reviews:

JUST RIGHT.......2006-11-04

These might not be the 'Greatest' or even my 'Favorite' versions of these concertos, but somehow, they feel 'Just Right'! A MUST HAVE!!!!

Sorry, I don't hear greatness on this CD.......2005-09-27

Certainly these are idiomatic performances that have held their own for decades. Geza Anda was a Bartok specialist, as was Fricsay. But the recoorded sound is limited, and the orchestra doesn't play to the highest standards. I keep this one aorund for my library, but there aare many spectacular modern versions of these pieces by, for example, Agerich, Pollini, and Ashkenazy that deliver more impact.

Top notch recordings!.......2004-12-22

The fervent sense of dramatis personae in these difficult passages of these dissonant piano concerts demands the most exigent domain of the instrument as well a notable conductor.
When Bartok stated in 1905 : The dissonance ` s empire is mine , certainly he was so far from being lying .
Ferenc Fricsay and Geza Anda gave the best of their craftsmanship to record one of the most notable and above all idiomatic readings of these concerts .
But besides , if you get the Piano Concerts with Gyorgy Sandor (The Complete Piano Concerts with Michael Gielen in the fifties) and a hard to find recording with Fricsay in 1955 with The Vienna Synphony , you will have the essential spirit of this notable composers . But these recordings are priority.
In addition , I recommend you a hidden and two distant recordings of Sandor Ormandy in the Bartok Premiere Third piano and the historic Barok Premiere Third Piano concerto in Europe given for the couple Louis Kentner - Adrian Boult . There was an outstanding Hungarian pianist in the thirties named Edith Farnadi who recorded an excels Liszt but I have got nothing about Bartok , but after listening to her it will be hard to fail ; as well any recording made for Annie Fisher , Zoltan Kocsis and more recently Andras Schiff .
It is not a mere casuality all these named performers are Hungarian . The only point to remark is to these last interpreters that to make a journey with Bela Bartok demands a conduction and such level of commitment that hardly you will be able to find after Fricsay and Kertesz 's deaths .
You may argue than Georg Solti and Istvan Kertesz were remarkable conductors. Yes indeed but I have always thought Solti was an overrated director and besides Solti and Kertesz established with Bartok a distant approach . Solti conducted more Orchestral pieces than Kertsesz but ironically they never found a high caliber pianist to play Bartok piano concertos
Acquire this set . It will reward you. I give you my word.

precious document........2004-11-23

I cannot say what are the definitive versions of Bartok's piano concertos, but this is an amazing set. The orchestra and soloist are exceptional, never afraid to be as light or heavy as the music demands, with an intuitive sensitivity to the score's demands.

Piano Concerto no.2 is my favorite. With his second concerto, Bartok wanted to make it "lighter" and more pleasant to the audience. However, he also desired to remain in the same sphere of compositional style as the first. Thus, he makes no compromises with popular taste, sacrificing nothing in the way of vision or complexity. Although technically similar in many respects, they are different in important ways. Compared to the first's impulsive, prickly development of ideas, the second asserts itself more meticulously, like Bartok's middle string quartets. The first movement is starkly arranged (winds, percussion, piano) but melodically delightful and rhythmically varied. Pianist Géza Anda's approach on the second concerto is in perfect command of the technical elements and also abstracts like the playfulness and eagerness. The deft but sweet conveyance of the second movement's critical presto is remarkable, and the return to adagio in the final section unleashes colossi of dissonant chords over rumbling percussion takes one's breath away. The final movement is best of all: deriving most of its material from the first movement, it is viciously dissonant and rhythmically aggressive. It is also a throwback to the Baroque period with its emphasis on contrapuntal technical and concise thematic development.

The first concerto also factored into this development of merging folksongs with baroque tradition. But despite Bartok's obvious commitment as an ethnomusicologist for Eastern Europe, "folk songs" for Bartok were did not only mean popular songs of the Carpathian Basin, but also other ancient musical traditions like African drum music. This is an important influence on the composition core of the first piano concerto. The rhythmical proto-idea appears at first on piano and brass (low-registers) and from here numerous thematic evolutions unfold. Long considered the most expressive of all instruments, Bartok shapes the music from the percussive qualities of the piano. The percussive aspects of the piano were often important to him. Percussion rises to a key role in this piece, as in the early part of the second movement, a tense exchange between percussions and piano. Then, an exhilarating piano ostinato in 3/8 for many bars, spliced and developed multitexturally and with melodic variation. These are powerful Bartok moments.

The third concerto is less dissonant, "brighter", and more "classical" than the other two. Yet Bartok's spritely melodies are captivating and the piano parts especially imaginative. The second movement is very powerful, with a slow and sparse texture but it develops into a complex formation of musical pinpricks and fragmentary melodies. It is less compelling than the other two, but it reflects a profound, deep atmosphere of uneasy peace.

The Benchmark Bartok Concerto Set.......2004-07-14

This classic set of Bartok's three piano concertos is also available in Anda's volume of "Great Pianists" on Philips, but I think this DG transfer is slightly superior. The recorded sound favors the piano somewhat over the orchestra - I could wish for a little closer orchestral perspective - but overall the sound here is excellent. Here are a few notes on both the music and the performances:

#1. Composed in 1926, this concerto is a muscular and rather dissonant work. The second mvt. Andante is a spooky dialogue between piano and percussion that seems to be a precursor to Bartok's chamber masterpiece: the Sonata for 2 Pianos and Percussion. This performance is one of the two finest I have heard; the other was on Bartok LP 313 (the label of Bartok's son Peter, a gifted recording engineer), with pianist Leonid Hambro and the Zimbler Sinfonietta conducted by Robert Mann (better known as the 1st violinist of the Juilliard Quartet, which left stunning recordings of the Six String Quartets). The mono sound on that disc (now available on CD) is close-up and clear as a bell, with a 2nd mvt. that is downright frightening in its primitive, wailing loneliness.

#2. Completed in 1931, this concerto strikes me as the finest of the three - it's far more contrapuntal and surely the hardest to play. In the 1st mvt., the piano takes charge from the beginning and plays almost continuously, while the strings are rather oddly silent throughout. Anda here is incredibly bold and extroverted - he obviously had technique to burn! The eerie 2nd mvt opening in the strings will sound familiar to anyone who has savored TV sci-fi of the 1960's: a very similar passage was employed by Dominic Frontiere in his music for "The Outer Limits." This mvt. is half Adagio and half Scherzo, and again the piano predominates. The Finale is an elaborate rondo which cleverly transforms the thematic/rhythmic elements heard in the 1st mvt.

Anda and Fricsay are wonderfully in sync throughout. Another stunning account of this work is the "live" 1969 concert reading by Claude Helffer, with Ernest Bour leading the Orchestre National de France on deleted INA Vogue 672006. That's a CD worth seeking out: I think its 2nd mvt. is a bit more compelling than Anda/Fricsay's. It is coupled with a really extraordinary live 1950 account of the Viola Concerto by William Primrose (for whom it was written), and the most savagely dramatic "Miraculous Mandarin" I have ever heard. And perhaps DG Westminster will get around to a CD re-issue of the c.1953 recording of Concertos 2 & 3 with Hungarian Edith Farnadi (daintier and more pointillistic than Anda), with remarkable conducting by Hermann Scherchen (his very slow introduction in the 2nd mvt. is disquietingly eerie). I have not heard the Sviatoslav Richter/Lorin Maazel account (EMI) - it is said to be superb.

#3. This is the only piano concerto that was not commissioned. The sick and impoverished Bartok wanted to give his wife Ditta a work with exclusive performance rights attached so as to insure her financial future. All but 18 bars of the concerto's orchestration was completed when Bartok was rushed to the hospital on 22 Sept. 1945 - he died there 4 days later. His protege Tibor Serly completed it (as he also did with the Viola Concerto). This is a gorgeous piece of music - it is Bartok's most romantic and meditative concerto. There is a subtle interplay of folk tune elements, and the slow mvt. Adagio Religioso seems like a humble prayer (almost Coplandesque in its simple, valedictory quality), with the usual demons almost at bay.

Anda and Fricsay give a performance that is both virile and sensitive; in many respects, it contains this set's finest moments. Fricsay constantly dmonstrates what an insightful and authoritative Bartok interpreter he was - if you haven't heard his Concerto for Orchestra or MSPC (both on DG), you are missing some terrific music making. Although only in mono, those recordings are among the finest ever, along with Reiner in the former and Mravinsky and Reiner in the latter.

For collectors, there is also a very interesting #3 on Dante CD 158, which features a c.1948 recording by Tatiana Nikolaieva with the USSR Radio under Nikolai Anosov (who, incidentally, was father of conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky). It's in pretty good sound given the source and has some fine pianism and very plangent wind playing. It is coupled with an uncut version of Tchaikovsky's 2nd Piano Concerto (my favorite reading).

To sum it up: this DG set is a superb testimonial to two great Hungarian artists who shared a love of Bartok's music (they performed the 2nd piano concerto together some 60 times in concert prior to making this recording). What a tragedy that both of them were so short-lived: Fricsay died of cancer at 48 and Anda passed away at age 54.

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