Concerto for Orchestra; Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta

Béla Bartók

Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Fritz Reiner, cond.)

album cover

Group Togetherness, on a Grand Scale

Everyone should experience the thrill of hearing a hundred or more musicians racing toward and then landing on the same downbeat at the same millisecond, with nary a whisker out of place. When a great orchestra is in sync, there's nothing quite like it in all of music—the mass of sound registers as something more than precision, a no-room-for-doubt chop that splits the air cleanly into "before" and "after." The notes become secondary to the slashing exactitude of placement.

You don't encounter this kind of precision every day. James Brown's bands had it. The Count Basie Orchestra, too. Prince has it. Many orchestras don't have it anymore—a mushy, behind-the-beat approach has taken root in the wind sections of some major symphonic groups. In the 1950s (and for a while after), the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was among the most detail-oriented; its recordings under Fritz Reiner, including this pair of unconventional Bartók works, are shining examples of group togetherness on a grand scale.

With its angular lines and abrupt changes of direction, Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta is a showpiece for those dramatic downbeats, offering a series of challenges that can vex even the most precision-minded ensemble. The Chicago Symphony rises to the task, putting serious oomph into those attacks—particularly during the frenzied and thrilling final movement, when the piano becomes the knife edge of the percussion section.

The longer and somewhat more substantial Concerto for Orchestra is an odd beast. It doesn't adhere to concerto form or the template for a symphony. Bartók envisioned it as a series of dialogs between various soloists and the larger group, and also between various sections. That's how it starts, with a foreboding low-strings murmur and an answering theme played by winds and harp. Similar exchanges crop up throughout—the second movement, subtitled "The Game of Pairs," is a capricious exercise in which the long and winding theme is carried by pairs of instruments that trade off at unexpected intervals. The third movement "Elegia," which is organized around a flowing melody, contains some of the most beautiful hallucinations ever played by a symphony orchestra.

There, and, really, throughout the piece, Bartók expects his interpreters to animate the material with crisp execution, but not overshadow its intricate web of themes and variations with too many interpretive flourishes. Reiner, who was Hungarian and knew Bartók personally, does this instinctively. He brings each crescendo to a satisfying brink, and then leaves space so that the individual attacks register as distinct events. Approaching the score not as notes but a series of textural challenges, Reiner brings Bartók to life with the balance of force and finesse that only happens when a hundred musicians play as one.

Genre: Classical
Released: 1958, RCA
Key Tracks: Music for Strings: Adagio. Concerto for Orchestra: "Elegia," Finale.
Another Interpretation: Chicago Symphony Orchestra (James Levine, cond.)
Catalog Choice: Violin Concerto No. 2, Rhapsodies Nos. 1 and 2, Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Pierre Boulez, cond.)
Next Stop: Igor Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring
After That: Frank Zappa: Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger, Ensemble InterContemporain
Book Pages: 47–48