Bartók’s exotic and richly colorful Wooden Prince ballet functions best when performed in the theater with dancers on stage. As a concert piece, there are relatively few passages that grab and hold the attention compared to the larger component of pure dance-pantomime. It’s all very original, constructed in Bartók’s inimitable harmonic language, and it’s imaginatively orchestrated.
Still, even in the finest performances–I’m talking here Boulez with either the super-virtuoso New York Philharmonic or Chicago Symphony, or Kocsis, who is steeped in the music’s native tradition–there are moments where you wish you’d brought your lunch. (Luckily the home listener can do just that.) Marin Alsop does a perfectly decent job in getting the orchestra to play the notes, and the Bournemouth Symphony does what she asks; but, valiant as these efforts are, the performance takes on a dreary sameness that more variety of pacing and a greater rhythmic edge might have mitigated (the dramatic Dance of the Princess and the Wooden Prince and the Great Apotheosis are welcome exceptions).
Of course, the overly reverberant recording doesn’t help matters–everything seems to be swimming in space. Ultimately, this is a recording of interest primarily to Wooden Prince aficionados (both of them), or to that considerably larger number of listeners who are enthusiastically following Alsop’s career. Others should go for Boulez/New York or Kocsis/Hungarian National Orchestra.
