These performances, the excellence of which is well known (as is their less than stellar sonic quality), acquire a new lease on life in multi-channel format. Heard in SACD surround sound, the Concerto for Orchestra’s second movement duets enjoy superior localization and a more vividly evocative textural environment. The rushing strings of the finale leap out of the speakers into your listening room. Similarly, the Mandarin’s overloaded climaxes sound less compacted and more subtly layered, while the dynamic range seems to have been expanded as well (witness the “chase” fugue and its ensuing orchestral hysteria).
Bartók’s music often is spatially conceived (remember the seating plans in the scores of such works as Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, or the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion), and the enhanced three-dimensionality that the surround format offers suits these pieces admirably. Here is one disc, then, that gains enormously from the new technology, and the fact that the Concerto for Orchestra doesn’t seem to be otherwise available domestically only adds to its attractions. [2/24/2003]
