0 Bartók: Works for Violin and Piano Volume 2

“Ehnes gives a stunning account of the Solo Sonata. The impression is that he's simply following all Bartok's meticulous direction...and adding nothing extra. If this seems boring, the effect is anything but: clarity of articulation, beauty of sound, the ease with which he surmounts the technical challenges, and deep understanding of the work's structure and character; all these combine to make a performance that's exciting and enthralling.” --Gramophone Magazine, January 2013

BBC Music Magazine Chamber Choice - March 2013

“Big toned yet poetic, Ehnes is a persuasive interpreter.” --The Observer, 20th January 2013

“Needless to say, the score [of the Solo Sonata] holds no terrors for Ehnes who delivers a magisterial performance...Ehnes and his excellent pianist, Andrew Armstrong, make the best possible case for reappraising the early Violin Sonata of 1903, dismissed by the composer as a mere apprentice work.” --BBC Music Magazine, March 2013 *****

Detail: Bartók: Works for Violin and Piano Volume 2

0 Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra & Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta

“If you're unfamiliar with these seminal mid-20th century works, here's an unmissable chance of getting to know it.” --BBC Music Magazine, June 2012 *****

“Warmth and vitality are appropriate keywords for this coupling, a practical Bartok primer you might say, well played, persuasively interpreted and nicely recorded...In the Concerto for Orchestra's first movement Marin Alsop and her players generate plenty of energy...a fine bargain and a credible starting point for those wanting to dip a toe into Bartokian waters.” --Gramophone Magazine, July 2012

“the music seems to have been conceived with the upfront style of American orchestral playing in mind...[Alsop's] account of the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta...is very impressive, controlled and pungent, albeit without quite the expressionist edge that the music sometimes needs.” --The Guardian, 10th May 2012 ***

“Her orchestra's precision here is enviable, with crisp ensemble playing and solo voices of considerable character. The sound is not particularly full-bodied but neither is it bloated - rather, it is to some extent reminiscent of the finest American orchestras of past decades in privileging nuance above raw power.” --International Record Review, May 2012

“This muscular and thrilling recording amply demonstrates why Marin Alsop is such a sought after conductor and why the Baltimore Symphony is so highly thought of all over the world.” --MusicWeb International, July 2012

Detail: Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra & Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta

0 Bartók: Concertos

“Gidon Kremer is by turns sublimely lyrical and bracingly driven in the First Violin Concerto… the interplay with the woodwind of the Berlin Philharmonic in the second movement is delightfully cheeky, as it is with Yuri Bashmet in a masterful account of the Viola Concerto.” --BBC Music Magazine, November 2008 ****

“And so Pierre Boulez's DG survey of Bartók's major orchestral works draws to a close. This final instalment opens with an Abbey Road taping of a masterpiece (the two-piano Sonataturned- Concerto) then alternates two fouryear- old Berlin Philharmonic recordings – the richly scored and erotically charged First Violin Concerto and the pared-down, largely ascetic Viola Concerto, an incomplete last testament rendered performable by the violaplayer Tibor Serly.

Yuri Bashmet treats the opening with considerable freedom and is consistently responsive to the score's more lyrical passages, though both he and Boulez bring a touch of menace to the closing moments of the slow movement.
Gidon Kremer sounds equally unfettered at the start of the Violin Concerto's gorgeous first movement but come the dizzy antics of the Allegrogiocoso he engages more with play than with reverie. In fact from around 2'20” he sounds positively bored – very unlike him (he's a favourite player of mine).

Boulez has spoken about the 'Concerto' orchestration of the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion as adding 'a different dimension' to the Sonata, especially in the first movement, and he substantiates his claim with a performance that is typically transparent and attentive in matters of balancing, the brass fanfares at around 9'16” in the first movement so vividly reminiscent of parallel passages in the Second Piano Concerto. Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich, although technically brilliant, keep a relatively low profile, which makes for added intimacy in the first movement's busy, often humorous badinage but rather mutes the rhythmic impact of the finale's opening. Greatly preferable is the stark, demonically driven spirit of the original – the Concerto pulls punches that the Sonata delivers in full – but Boulez's performance states a strong case for the plusher concerto alternative.” --Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

Detail: Bartók: Concertos