The famous Joseph Szigeti/Bela Bartók April 13, 1940 Library of Congress Recital, first issued on Vanguard LPs in the 1960s, also was brought out by Hungaroton in its complete Bartók at the Piano edition. Both labels offer the Szigeti/Bartók concert on CD, and there’s little to choose between them except for price. While neither artist was completely satisfied with the concert, their intense, communicative playing makes these works sound as if they’re being improvised on the spot. In Bartók’s own Second Sonata and First Rhapsody, the musicians stress the music’s frequently overlooked lyricism and speech-like accentuation. Certainly their studio recording of the Rhapsody, made for Columbia less than a month following the Washington concert, doesn’t match the vibrancy and inner freedom of their live performance.
Debussy’s Violin Sonata finds Szigeti wielding a wider palette of colors and articulations than he managed in his 1941 studio recording with Andor Foldes at the piano. Szigeti certainly sounds more inspired by Bartók’s volatile, harmonically aware pianism and propulsive sense of rhythm, so different from Foldes’ solid, workmanlike support. There’s nothing remotely generic about Szigeti and Bartók’s way with Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata, one of the most compellingly recreative interpretations of this staple preserved in sound. The first thing you notice is Bartók’s old-fashioned habit of arpeggiating many chords Beethoven did not indicate to be rolled. You’ll also hear a wider degree of tempo fluctuation within the central variation movement, plus a Finale whose whirling patterns emerge in long, sweeping lines that never fall into foursquare notespinning. In the first movement, Bartók ups the emotional ante as he intensifies the E minor theme at measure 145 (and its subsequent appearances) by slightly broadening the sforzandos. Szigeti, in turn, digs into his passagework more fervently than in his admirable versions with Arrau and Horszowski. Not every historic recording lives up to its legend, but this fascinating document does, and always will.
