Bartok--Hard-Edged and From Other Approaches

Much conventional wisdom becomes stale with repetition--and meaningless under close scrutiny. For instance: the Hungarians, if not inherently possessing all the secrets to performing the music of native son Bela Bartok, project it with more lyricism, to balance its often harsh angularity, than musicians from elsewhere, most notably Americans.

That notion derives from the time after Bartok’s death in 1945, when Americans and Hungarians were the only ones who played and recorded his music, and particularly through what were the best-known recorded interpretations of his six string quartets: by the Juilliard Quartet (American)--tautly inflected, mercilessly tough--and, later, the more emotionally varied views of the Hungarian String Quartet, led by the composer’s friend, Zoltan Szekely.

Today’s upholders of Bartok’s tough-guy side are the Emerson Quartet, whose Grammy-winning interpretations of the Six are on the Deutsche Grammophon label. But if you want to hear an equally driven, equally accomplished version, you can get it from Hungary: from the Tatrai Quartet, led by Vilmos Tatrai, godfather to a generation of his country’s chamber musicians (Hungaroton 31509/11, 3 CDs, mid-price).

In these reissued mid-1960s recordings, the Tatrais strong-arm their way through these magnificent scores with enormous drive and technical aplomb. If in the last two quartets their attitude is less determinedly pushy than the Emerson’s, the astringent recording--to match Tatrai’s astringent violin--compensates.

Disc three is rounded out by Bartok’s popular Divertimento for string orchestra, a blending here of elegance of execution and rhythmic propulsion, with Tatrai leading the Hungarian Chamber Orchestra.

Accommodated on two CDs, new versions of the Bartok Six by the New Budapest Quartet (unrelated to any similarly named group) makes a reasonably strong showing, with less emphasis on Bartok’s savagery--perhaps by default. By the Third Quartet, it becomes clear that both violinists are strained to their limits, and beyond, by the composer’s technical demands, whereas the superbly confident cellist is capable of anything Bartok throws his way (Hyperion 6658 1/2).

Technical considerations are made light of in the lyrical--but by no means dramatically deficient--traversals on the British Collins label of four of the six by the Prague-based Talich Quartet, a frequent visitor to the Southland.

The Talich’s relationship with Collins unfortunately ended before it could record Nos. 3 and 4. But what we do have (1 and 5 are coupled on 12792, 2 and 6 on 11882) is reminiscent of the old Hungarian String Quartet in its balancing of the tough and tender, but without the Hungarians’ technical lapses.

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Moving up, way up, on the decibel scale, consider Bartok’s deliriously trashy ballet--sex, the supernatural, slashings and salvation in the urban jungle: how could it fail today?--”The Miraculous Mandarin,” which has been receiving quite a workout lately, both live (in concert-suite form, minus the original’s ghostly ending.

The score can make a tremendous visceral impact, but not when played with as little regard for shape and continuity as it is by the London Philharmonic under Franz Welser-Most (EMI 54858), or as thickly as by Charles Dutoit and his Montreal Symphony (London 436 210).

The horrific heart of “Mandarin” is far better communicated by the hardly stellar team of conductor Hiroyuki Iwaki and the Melbourne Symphony. And the coupling on this surpassingly well-recorded, mid-priced CD (Virgin 61106) is a treasure: a pristine performance--the only kind allowable--of Stravinsky’s ethereal “Apollon musagete” by the strings of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Jukka-Pekka Saraste’s probing, sensitive direction. Highly recommended.

Welser-Most’s program also includes a strait-laced reading of Bartok’s “Dance Suite” and a patchy, noisy (the conductor’s fault, not the composer’s) “Peacock” Variations of Kodaly, while Dutoit’s coupling is a rather obese Bartok Divertimento and his early “Two Portraits,” the latter distinguished by Chantal Juillet’s graceful violin solo.*