Bartok Violin

The 2010s have brought an unusually strong succession of recording of Bartók's two violin concertos, each one adding something to the dialogue. The year 2018 brought new recordings by French violinist Renaud Capuçon and Germany's Christian Tetzlaff, the latter with Hannu Lintu leading the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. The two recordings contrast sharply, which indicates nothing so much as the continuing richness of these works. Where Capuçon is dreamy, perhaps influenced by Bartók's connections to French Impressionism, Tetzlaff is big, dramatic, and firmly within the German virtuoso tradition.

For your debut album, what motivated you to choose a rather difficult program with works by Hindemith, Bartók, and Poulenc? Are they currently your favorite composers? Have you performed these works often in recitals? As an artist, I find it fascinating to observe how composers reacted to current affairs: whenever they had to deal with a totalitarian regime, persecution, resistance, or exile.

Neither too nationalist nor too internationalist, this 1995 recording of Béla Bartók's two violin concertos featuring Thomas Zehetmair with Ivan Fischer leading the Budapest Festival Orchestra is just right. Austrian-born Zehetmair has a fabulous technique, a warm but focused tone, and lively sense of rhythm, all of which make him an ideal Bartók player. His interpretations are less about showing off then about digging in, and his performances are more about the music than they are about the musician. Hungarian conductor Fischer and his Hungarian orchestra are not only up for the music in a technical sense, they are also down with the music in an emotional sense, and their accompaniments ground Zehetmair's coolly flamboyant performances. Captured in white-hot sound that is almost too vivid for its own good, these performances deserve to stand among the finest ever recorded.

Béla Bartók's Violin Concerto No. 2, BB 117 was written in 1937–38. During the composer's life, it was known simply as his Violin Concerto. His other violin concerto, Violin Concerto No. 1, Sz. 36, BB 48a, was written in the years 1907–1908, but only published in 1956, after the composer's death, as "Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. posth." Bartók composed the concerto in a difficult stage of his life, when he was filled with serious concerns about the growing strength of fascism. He was of firm anti-fascist opinions, and therefore became the target of various attacks in pre-war Hungary. Bartók initially planned to write a single-movement concerto set of variations, but Zoltán Székely wanted a standard three-movement concerto. In the end, Székely received his three movements, while Bartók received his variations: the second movement is a formal set of variations, and the third movement is a variation on material from the first.

Isabelle Faust plays Bartok like a wonder-struck explorer confronting new terrains. She wrestles triumphantly with the First Violin Sonata's knotty solo writing, reduces her tone to a whisper for the more mysterious passages, employs a wide range of tonal colours and trans forms the finale's opening bars into a fearless war dance. This is cerebral music with a heart of fire and will brook no interpretative compromises: you either take it on its own terms, or opt for something milder.