Bartók and Lutosławski: Two Concertos, One Conceptual Gambit
Sir Andrew Davis, conductor; Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra; Andrew Davis, conductor.
APEX 0927 40619 2. Format, 66:27.
The pairing makes immediate sense on paper—two towering orchestral concertos separated by barely a decade, Bartók’s 1943 masterwork and Lutosławski’s 1954 response to the same formal challenge. Both composers treating the orchestra itself as soloist, both navigating the treacherous waters between late Romanticism and postwar modernism. It’s an intelligent coupling, the kind that should illuminate both works through strategic proximity.
Should, yes. But doesn’t quite.
The trouble starts with the Bartók, which is to say it starts immediately. Davis’s opening Introduzione lacks that nocturnal mystery, that sense of something emerging from primordial darkness that makes this music so gripping. The strings sound polite—there’s simply no other word for it. Where Solti found menace, where Reiner (still unsurpassed after all these years) discovered an entire shadow world of Magyar inflection, Davis offers us well-groomed efficiency. The “Giuoco delle coppie” wants more character in those instrumental pairs: the bassoons especially sound anonymous, their duet lacking the faintly grotesque quality that should make you smile and shudder simultaneously.
I kept returning to Rattle’s Birmingham recording, made at Symphony Hall in one of those white-hot live performances where everything clicks. The comparison proved fatal for Davis. Listen to the “Elegia“—Rattle’s woodwinds weave those modal lines with such delicacy, such tangible atmosphere, that you can practically smell the night air. Davis’s performance feels—what’s the word? Dutiful. The notes are there, the balances are fine, but the soul has gone missing somewhere between the podium and the microphone.
The "finale" wants to explode off the page. It doesn’t. Not here.
The Lutosławski fares somewhat better, though “somewhat” is doing considerable work in that sentence. Davis understands the architecture—this is a composer who thinks in blocks of sound, in textural plateaus and sudden precipices. The Royal Stockholm players handle the technical demands with aplomb, and there’s a moment following the first movement climax (around 5:35, if you’re keeping score at home) where Davis brings the horns through the texture with genuinely impressive clarity.
But then you remember Lutosławski’s own recording with the Polish Radio orchestra, that EMI disc that’s been knocking around for decades now. Yes, the ensemble is rougher. Yes, the recording sounds its age. And yes, I love it precisely for those qualities—for the raw energy, the sense that this music is being wrestled into existence rather than reproduced from a spotless score. The opening string motif in the composer’s hands hits you between the eyes; here it sounds like it’s happening in the next room.
The Stockholm disc captures everything with crystalline clarity, which turns out to be part of the problem. Lutosławski’s textures need a certain density, even opacity at times. Too much clarity can bleach the color right out of this music.
So where does this leave us? With a superbudget disc that offers intelligent repertoire choices and thoroughly professional performances that never quite catch fire. For someone building a library on a shoestring, wanting representative performances of two major twentieth-century works, this will certainly serve. The coupling remains fascinating—I found myself toggling between the works repeatedly, hearing the harmonic and rhythmic connections, the shared DNA of midcentury orchestral thinking.
But if you’re after the Bartók, invest in Reiner or Rattle or Fischer—any of them will give you what Davis doesn’t. And if you want the Lutosławski, track down the composer’s own recording, which couples this work with Jeux vénitiens, Livre pour orchestre, and Mi-parti—a genuine introduction to one of the century’s most individual voices.
Davis is a performer of intelligence and taste. His Stockholm forces play well. But this disc never transcends its own competence, and in repertoire this competitive, competence simply isn’t enough.
