This release is a mixed bag. There’s no question about the quality of the performances, which is excellent. The Sonata has plenty of atmosphere and more than the necessary drive. The outer movements are both extremely exciting, particularly the finale, which these players attack with relish, while the central slow movement manages to sound at once spooky and sharply etched. Very clean and clear sonics balance the percussion contribution extremely well: the timpani never muddy the bass lines, and the purely rhythmic interjections from the various drums are always crisp at all dynamic levels.
The problem comes in the form of Bartók’s two-piano version of The Miraculous Mandarin, an arrangement that materially misrepresents the piece. The three “decoy games”, for example, lose all of their allure when transferred from the sexy timbre of the solo clarinet to the keyboard. All of the climaxes–from the opening cacophony, to the entrance of the Mandarin with its terrifying trombone glissandos, to the vicious eruption before the “chase” fugue and the violent pounding afterward–misfire. This is because in the orchestral medium Bartók has no problem keeping the volume increasing as the tension mounts through a progressive rise in pitch, largely thanks to the woodwind and added percussion (cymbals and bass drum particularly).
On the pianos, however, as soon as the bass drops out, the volume decreases and the music loses the necessary impact. There’s simply no getting around this. Add in the sheer volume of sustained coloristic effects that can only be translated to the keyboard as omnipresent tremolos, and the piece begins to sound very thin on substance while losing most of its atmosphere as well. Even the ability of the keyboard medium to clarify the music’s harmonic substructure contributes to making it sound plain rather than evocative or terrifying.
Obviously an arrangement such as this might have been necessary in the days before recording, or for purposes of rehearsal, but there’s really no reason to release it on disc, and however fine the performance there are other equally good versions of the Sonata. So if you are looking for this particular coupling, I can recommend this release without hesitation, but it strikes me as more suited to the specialist collector.
