Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Bartok?

The taking up of Bela Bartok’s music by star soloists, particularly since the 1981 centennial of the composer’s birth, has enabled many listeners to overcome their fear of one of the great 20th-Century composers. When the likes of an Ashkenazy, Pollini, Barenboim, Argerich, Perlman, Kremer, Mintz and now Midori speak, audiences listen and learn to love.

A previous generation had only Yehudi Menuhin, among the big-draw international soloists, consistently to champion Bartok’s cause. Heifetz, Milstein, Rubinstein and Horowitz could not have cared less.

Midori could go the usual route of offering her thoughts on the overworked 19th-Century concertos. Instead, she devotes herself increasingly to music about which she has something personal to say, presently the two Bartok concertos (Sony Classical 45941), with which neither the catalogue nor our minds are saturated.

The Second Concerto (1938) has rarely seemed more accessible or poignantly lyrical than in Midori’s hands. Her efforts are ably seconded by Zubin Mehta, displaying a sensitivity to dynamics and the elegant turn of phrase that characterizes his recent work, particularly, as is the case here, with the Berlin Philharmonic.

The flickering half-lights and gentle melancholy of the youthful, impressionistically colored First Concerto emerge with equal conviction from these superbly matched artists.

A dissimilar approach is taken by violinist Kyung Wha Chung and conductor Georg Solti who leads the Chicago Symphony (in No. 1) and London Philharmonic (in No. 2) on a mid-priced reissue (London Jubilee 425 015).

Their quicker, more edgy (in both tone and spirit) readings, particularly of No. 2--reminiscent of Menuhin and Furtwangler in the pioneering 1953 release, now one of EMI/Angel’s “Great Recordings of the Century”--are as apt as those of Midori-Mehta but likely to present problems for the first-time listener. The Second Concerto’s Romantic resonances here are subordinated to a more modern, angst-laden spirit.

Collectors should take note of the reappearance of the world premiere performance (Amsterdam, 1939) of the Second Concerto by its dedicatee, violinist Zoltan Szekely, and the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Willem Mengelberg (Philips “Legendary Classics” 422 305, mid-price).

The shellacs from which the transfers were made are noisy and the volume level is inconsistent, but the performance is so alive with the performers’ dedication and skill, their thrill of discovery, as to override any sonic drawbacks.

The 1943 Concerto for Orchestra is so thoroughly a part of the repertory--a catchy showpiece that has opened many a resistant mind to “modern music”--that it has been subjected to (and withstood) as many interpretive viewpoints as any Romantic symphony, as witness its two most recent recorded outings.

In a performance with “personal statement” written all over it, Adam Fischer leads the enthusiastic, skillful forces of the Hungarian State Symphony through a brashly eccentric but never unengaging reading, filled with swooping dynamics, mammoth, protracted crescendos and sudden tempo shifts.

Don’t waste time looking for ethnic justifications for Fischer’s approach. Most of the Concerto’s famous interpreters--Reiner, Szell, Solti, Dorati and Ferencsik (who used the same native orchestra as Fischer)--are Hungarians who performed and recorded the work convincingly and dissimilarly.

Fischer and his colleagues apply themselves with some of the same spirit of exploration but, fittingly, with more aggressiveness and less rhythmic diddling to Bartok’s ferocious, irresistibly horrific “Miraculous Mandarin” Suite. The recording of both works, made in the stately Haydnsaal of the Esterhazy Palace in Eisenstadt, is stunning in its power and immediacy.

In contrast to Fischer’s exhaustive probing, the Concerto for Orchestra from Mariss Jansons and his keenly responsive Oslo Philharmonic (EMI/Angel 54070) is a brisk, bracing, athletic workout, the coupling a taut, brilliantly executed “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta” from the same forces.