Ode to Bartok’s 3rd Piano Concerto

[furtwaengler]

Hello pianostreet,

As I was reading over communist’s thread on "Best modern piano concerto" I contemplated the following and thought to make a new topic. This topic.

I've *just* decided this: My favorite piano concerto of all time (and times) is the Bartok 3rd, which is currently going through my head phones in a performance from 1959 by Julius Katchen with Hans Rosbaud and the WDR SO Köln. I adore this concerto and love performances like this.

I remember having a real problem with the octave scale at the end thinking Bartok himself would never have written such, but it is now acceptable to me, not wishing to lose this marvelous music. This in also a supreme case of discovering late something one has already known for a while, as if it is new, seeing for the first time an obvious beauty that had for whatever reason in the past been looked over. It is especially great for this to happen in people, discovering something in a friend that had always been there, but perception failed to perceive...but in music often times happens in a new performance.

The performance opening my eyes to see Bartok's 3rd Piano Concerto in its truest beauty came about in recording a broadcast in 2005 of Michael Gielen's visit to Hamburg to conduct the NDR SO in Mahler's 6th Symphony, the piece I've listened to and studied more than any other piece. So in this intention of picking up yet another Mahler 6th, I heard the Bartok 3rd which preceded it, played by Elena Bashkirova (concert of October 28th, 2005). I was caught completely off guard (and indeed bowled over!) by the 2nd movement's unparalleled (or hardly paralleled) purity...is it the most beautiful thing ever written? This type of experience in a piece of music has a cause and effect which springs every other performance to life, and opens an unquenchable thirst for its clear, cool, refreshing waters. I tell you the truth though, I have never heard a better performance then that of Elena Bashkirova, Michael Gielen and the NDR SO in Hamburg, the one which originally lit this fire. 

Couplings: Sometime experiment and listen in the same breath to Beethoven's A minor String Quartet op. 132, followed by your favorite recording of Bartok's 3rd Piano Concerto. I promise it will make a glorious cap to your day.

Best,

Dave

[goldentone]

I enjoyed reading your post and your discovery of the Bashkirova's performance of Bartok's 3rd, Furtwaengler.  I will have to give Bartok's 3rd a listen sometime.  I am familiar with pretty much zero of Bartok's music.  Mahler's 6th--now there is some definite common ground.  I bought the CD of it back in '99.  I was in love with it and just immersed myself in it.  The second movement is so beautiful and intense, and seems like it could go on forever, as only Mahler can.  I would be very interested to hear sometime what you think about it.

Okay, enough about Mahler.  This is a Bartok thread.