Music for Strings, Percussion & Celesta, Sz. 106, BB 114
Concerto for Orchestra, Sz. 116, BB 123
This 2005 hybrid SACD of Béla Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Sz. 106, and the Concerto for Orchestra, Sz. 116, is remarkable for its up-close multichannel recording and glorious sonorities, but it is truly extraordinary for its stunning musicality and powerful depth of expression. Seiji Ozawa and the Saito Kinen Orchestra are in rare form in both works, and this famously exacting conductor draws out vividly detailed performances that can be compared in all fairness with the legendary renditions by Fritz ...
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This 2005 hybrid SACD of Béla Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Sz. 106, and the Concerto for Orchestra, Sz. 116, is remarkable for its up-close multichannel recording and glorious sonorities, but it is truly extraordinary for its stunning musicality and powerful depth of expression. Seiji Ozawa and the Saito Kinen Orchestra are in rare form in both works, and this famously exacting conductor draws out vividly detailed performances that can be compared in all fairness with the legendary renditions by Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In this terrific live recording of Music, one is reminded at every bar of all the meticulous details and magical timbres Reiner achieved in his 1958 RCA recording; and Ozawa's pacing and articulation in the Concerto for Orchestra are quite similar to Reiner's 1955 recording. But more importantly, what both Reiner and Ozawa produced in their respective recordings -- overlooking the 50 years of recording advances between them -- is a special...
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