Béla Bartók: KossuthCPO
The only great composer ever to launch his orchestral career in Manchester, Bartók made his debut in February 1904, aged 22, with a 20-minute suite of such untypicality that it was sidelined in his worklist and left to languish unheard. Kossuth is a symphonic poem of the kind that Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler popularised 20 years earlier.Named after a hero of the 1848 Hungarian revolt against the Austrian Empire, it cloaks Lajos Kossuth in romantic tonality and relates his life in ten episodes of progressive futility. As the Austrians near victory (track 8), Bartók plays in Haydn’s Kaiser anthem. Hans Richter, Wagner’s house conductor, gave the work its Manchester premiere and one English newspaper headlined it ‘Strauss Out-Straussed’.Bartók never returned to mainstream romanticism. In the next decade he explored indigenous Balkan and North African musics, finding his voice at the edge of the tonal spectrum. But it makes no sense to cut Kossuth out of his biography. This excellent performance by Cornelius Meister and the Vienna radio orchestra reveals a host of might-have-beens, the false paths young Bela might have taken if Manchester had acclaimed his first venture. These intriguing hints reinforce the innocent idealism of the piece, beckoning you to hear it again.Bartók’s Rumanian Dances are given an equally vivid restoration, but the Concerto for Orchestra at the centre of this album lacks the caustic savagery of 1940s loss and exile.Three male singersLawrence BrownleeOpus ArteThe US lyric tenor is so persuasive in his own language that idiomatic flaws are all too easily suspected in French, German, Italian and Spanish art songs. His account of Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child is, of itself, worth the album price. Ian Burnside accompanies.Arnold BezuyenOehmsThe Wagnerian tenor sounds overly dramatic in Schumann’s Dichterliebe; the surprise is how deftly he delivers seven early songs by Alban Berg, drifting to the edge of tonality. Jura Margulis is the pianist.Ian BostridgeEMIThe voice closest in colour to Peter Pears’s sings four sets of Britten songs for piano (Antonio Pappano) and one for guitar (Xuefei Yang). Brittenites will adore this album. It left me cold as a winter pond.___Norman Lebrecht is a regular presenter on BBC Radio 3 and a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and other publications. He has written 12 books about music, the most recent being Why Mahler? He hosts the blog Slipped Disc.
