GRAMOPHONE Review: Bartók Concerto For Orchestra, Four Orchestral Pieces – Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra/Canellakis

The curtain-raiser somewhat eclipses the main event in this instance. Why we don’t hear more of Bartok’s Four Orchestral Pieces I cannot imagine – their relative compactness belies a breadth and depth and drama that calls to mind Berg’s contemporaneous Three Orchestra Pieces. But we are in the shadows of Bartok’s operatic masterpiece Duke Bluebeard’s Castle here and as the first of the pieces – Prelude – begins to unfold we might be discovering what lies behind the eighth door of Bluebeard’s forever home.

This is a lush, fantastical, heart-achingly beautiful landscape shot through with ineffable sadness. The dark side of Bartok’s imagination. The explosive shock of the Scherzo is as unexpected as it is unforgiving (its violence suggestive of that lovelorn Mandarin), the hypnotic night waltz (Intermezzo) is deeply unsettling, and the concluding Funeral March comes close to out-Mahlering Mahler in its intensity. There would seem to be no way out of the darkness.

Karina Canellakis (who wrote the detailed – and impassioned – liner notes) clearly relates to the ethos of these pieces and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra (impressively engineered by the Pentatone team) paint the soundscapes with both finesse and fire.

I think with Concerto for Orchestra the key challenge for interpreters lies with striking a convincing balance between the startlingly inventive orchestral showpiece we know it to be and the symphonic drama we want it

to be. I think Canellakis perhaps weighs too heavily on the former, seemingly prioritising form over characterisation. There is atmosphere in the opening pages – though not I have to say the kind of crepuscular effect you get from Susanna Mälkki and the Helsinki Philharmonic in their impressive account from a couple of years back. Also those precipitous outbursts, both in the first movement and the searing Elegie, feel slightly cosmetic. I just don’t feel their emotional urgency.

The Netherlands Radio Philharmonic are never less than proficient in fulfilling Bartok’s demands – the ‘lake of tears’ limpid and beautiful at the start of the Elegie – but for all the elegance and virtuosity of the playing I want more of Bartok’s humour and earthiness. This feels very urbane. The Intermezzo’s rude ‘interruption’ sounds very ‘literal’, po-faced, the finale, exciting to a point, hardly rips from the page.

Good to hear the Four Pieces done so well but there are better and more emotive accounts of the Concerto for Orchestra out there.