Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer - Béla Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra & Dance Suite (1990)

A new recording of a work as often recorded as the Concerto for Orchestra should offer something unusual, as well, and this disc does. Kossuth, a 20-minute symphonic poem, was the 22-year-old composer's first major orchestral composition. The conception owes much to Richard Strauss and the style to Liszt, but there are plenty of hints of material that show up in his mature works. The Village Scenes is a particularly exciting choral-orchestral expansion of a work originally for voices and piano, and the Concerto of course, is enormously popular. Fischer is a firm and skilled conductor, and his orchestra is made up of Hungary's finest players. The performances are thoroughly convincing; unlike many non-Hungarians, these players seem to take the composer's folk-based rhythms for granted, and do not exaggerate them. Despite enormous competition, this well-recorded performance of the concerto, along with the rarities also included, is well worth investigating. – Paul Turok