For many decades, if there was a modernist 20th century work on a mainstream American symphonic program, it was likely to be one of the two Bartók works on this album, or perhaps something by Stravinsky. Each, especially the Concerto for Orchestra, has perhaps suffered from its own success, and these readings by the Helsinki Philharmonic and conductor Susanna Mälkki feel like they fill a need. The two late Bartók works have appealing melodies and take a step back toward tonality, and as a result, they have sometimes been ...
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For many decades, if there was a modernist 20th century work on a mainstream American symphonic program, it was likely to be one of the two Bartók works on this album, or perhaps something by Stravinsky. Each, especially the Concerto for Orchestra, has perhaps suffered from its own success, and these readings by the Helsinki Philharmonic and conductor Susanna Mälkki feel like they fill a need. The two late Bartók works have appealing melodies and take a step back toward tonality, and as a result, they have sometimes been seen as conservative, as populist retreats from modernity. Yet there is another way to regard them, and that's what Mälkki catches here. Each work is more complicated in texture than what Bartók had achieved previously. The Music for strings, percussion, and celesta deploys four string groups around a central core of percussion, piano, celesta, and harp, and the interaction between the sonorities thus enabled and the various folk rhythms involved has considerable intricacy. The...
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