Bartók: Piano Concerto No. 3, BB 127, Sz. 119

This is the first concerto recording by Jean-Efflam Bavouzet for Chandos. Following the tremendous success of his complete Debussy piano music edition (‘This could well be the finest and most challenging of all Debussy piano cycles’ – Bryce Morrison, Gramophone) – which scooped awards from both Gramophone and BBC Music – and the launch of his ambitious Haydn Piano Sonatas series, the pianist now turns his attention to some of the mightiest concertos of the twentieth century. The three Bartók Piano Concertos on a single CD represents superb value for money.

Bartók wrote his First Concerto, one of his most challenging works, in 1926. The percussive piano writing ads much bite to the textures. The first movement is striking in its rhythmic vigour and dramatic character. The central Andante is essentially a dialogue between the soloist and four percussion players and features much atmospheric ‘Night Music’. In the finale, following without a break, the brilliant motoric rhythms of the first movement return, as does the dramatic use of percussion in a thrilling mêlée of sound.

The Second Concerto was first performed in 1933. The music is more melodically appealing and in the first movement, which is notably contrapuntal, the strings are silent throughout. The hushed slow movement on strings is interrupted half way through by a brilliant and startling scherzo, with a striking sequence of tremolos and note-clusters, before the haunting quiet mood of the opening returns. The finale, again with brilliant use of percussion (as well as brass), ends the work in virtuoso fashion.

The Third Concerto was written at the end of the composer’s life, in 1945, and is much more restrained than the previous piano concertos. The work is lighter, airy, and almost neo-classical compared to much of his earlier music. Unlike much of Bartók’s output, the piece was not composed on commission, but was rather created as a surprise birthday gift for Bartók’s second wife, Ditta Pásztory, who was, like Bartók, a skilled concert pianist. The two lively outer movements, full of the composer’s distinctive rhythmic drive, are separated by a slow movement of great beauty and serenity, with, again, a striking, contrasting middle section. The final seventeen bars were orchestrated by the composer’s pupil, Tibor Serly, after the composer’s death, based on Bartók’s notes.

This well-filled 2CD set – nearly 2 hours and 40 minutes long – presents Bartók’s major concertos (the Viola Concerto appears on another Eloquence CD released this month). The three Piano Concertos appear in muscular and sumptuously recorded performances (one of the finest examples of Decca’s 1970s engineering at the venerated Kingsway Hall) by Pascal Rogé and Walter Weller. Likewise, the Second Violin Concerto resurrects a long-buried 1980 Argo recording by the late Iona Brown, with none other than Sir Simon Rattle conducting. The First Violin Concerto, the result of an ultimately called-off love affair with Stefi Geyer, found its music rechannelled into the Two Portraits and in Kyung Wha Chung and Chantal Juillet, respectively, find two of the composer’s most persuasive advocates.

“Iona Brown gives a clean-cut and stylish performance, superbly recorded” Penguin Guide

Recording made in 2008.

Booklet notes.

Klára Würtz studied with Zoltan Kocsis and Gyorgy Kurtag, and received a scholarship from András Schiff for his masterclasses at Prussia Cove, Cornwall, UK. She has since performed widely in the North America and Europe When Bartók started work on his Third and last piano concerto in 1944, he was already ill, and in exile in the United States. The following year he died, leaving the concerto almost complete. His pupil Tibor Serly completed the final bars using Bartók’s instructions. The concerto was premiered in 1946 and was an immediate success. Unlike much of his earlier work, the Third concerto like the Concerto for Orchestra shows a more approachable and less modernistic character. The public had balked at Bartók’s spiky and percussive music, and the comparatively warm, almost wistful romanticism of the Third concerto provides an ideal introduction to the composer. The work is the summation of his close relationship with the concertos of the classical and romantic period composers he admired – Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt and Richard Strauss. Ravel was determined to write just one work in each genre, and if he ever deviated from his rule, the resulting work in the same genre contrasted greatly with its companion. His two piano concertos were composed around 1930. The Concerto for the Left Hand is a very challenging work for the performer, and the mood is predominantly dark and brooding. In contrast the Concerto in G was described by Ravel as a divertissement, and he said that Mozart and Saint-Saëns provided the inspiration. Allied to these influences is Ravel’s love of jazz which can be detected in the first movement and the finale which frame a serene and beautiful slow movement.