Philharmonia Orchestra/Salonen

Bartok

Signum Classics

THOUGH I don’t think it’s intended as such, this selection of works by Bela Bartok, superbly played in concert by the Philharmonia Orchestra with associated artists and the ever-electric Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting, amounts to a top-drawer sampler of music by the Hungarian composer whose idiom some listeners still seem to find challenging and even forbidding.

In the pantomime, the explicitly juicy Miraculous Mandarin, there is a really meaty story for those who like a narrative to stabilise their footing through the ever-whirling, thumping music that is shot through with sleazy instrumental detail. There is the quintessential earthy folk tang of the five-movement Dance Suite, and the dazzling three-movement Contrasts, for clarinet, violin and piano. This was commissioned from Bartok by Benny Goodman, is not remotely jazzy, and totally scintillating in this performance by violinist Zsolt-Thamer Visontay, clarinettist Mark van de Wiel and pianist Yefim Bronfman. Contrasts, probably the least-known piece on the disc, and a rare foray into chamber music by Bartok, other than in his six string quartets, is an absolute cracker with brilliant wee cadenzas for violin and clarinet, stipulated by Goodman in the commission.

Michael Tumelty