Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra, BB 123, Sz.116, etc.

January 2006

*****

“Eschenbach opens with Martinů's Memorial to Lidice… this performance serves to intensify an overriding feeling of despair, the Philadelphians responding with a chilling incisiveness particularly in the deathly bitonal chords that appear at the beginning and end of the work. Gideon Klein's Partita is a highly effective string orchestral transcription of a Trio written in Terezín some months before this talented composer was deported to Auschwitz. Within this... context Bartók's Concerto... emerges as a much darker and more disturbing work. Once... Eschenbach emphasises these resonances by taking his time in the slow introduction to the first movement and thereby building up a much greater head of steam in the exciting accelerando to the Allegro Vivace.”