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This disc offers the ideal coupling of concert works from Bartók’s final decade—the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936) and Concerto for Orchestra (1943). And it should come as no surprise that the Helsinki crew deliver smashingly good, big-league accounts of both scores. After all, Finns don’t fool around. Much of the credit belongs to Mälkki, the Philharmonic’s chief conductor since 2016 (and an outstanding string player to boot), whose conducting preserves the momentum of both works. Tempo transitions are masterfully managed, while Bartók’s carefully marked dynamics are accorded enormous respect. Mälkki gets the muted Bartókian mystery of the opening pages of the MSPC exactly right, and continues getting things right all the way to the end of the Concerto for Orchestra. The Philharmonic execute with virtuosity aplenty, making child’s play of Bartók’s shifting meters and tricky rhythms. BIS’s recording is in the demonstration category when it comes to presence and imaging, with scary realistic percussion and spectacular placement of instruments and sections on the stage. The presence of solo instruments in pp is astonishing; overall this is spatially the best, most immediate rendering either work has received in the last 50 years.
By Ted Libbey
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