Bartok - Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta

The exploration of this fascinating piece continues. This time I looked at a performance of the Berliner Philarmoniker conducted by Pierre Boulez via their Digital Concert Hall. For just under 10 euro one has 24 hour access to the DCH's archive of about 75 concerts and a live concert if there is one in your time slot. It's similar, of course, to watching a music DVD. The difference is that the content is streamed over the internet. Everything is taped in so-called High Definition. Of course, it can never be a substitute for a live experience, but I can imagine that in a carbon constrained world we will have to make do with these surrogate experiences more often. Also, I must admit that I almost stopped going to live concerts. Partly it's an issue of time. But it has become much more stressful too with the busy traffic into Brussels at all times of the day. We used to leave the house at 7 pm and drive leisurely to the Bozar, but that is not possible anymore. An earlier start also means that you have the tail of the evening peak hour which makes it even more risky. Therefore I welcome opportunities such as these to partake at least partially in the live atmosphere.There are additional advantages such as access to program notes and interviews with the artists.

The Boulez performance is a very good one. In fact, it may be the best I have heard so far, with the exception, perhaps, of the Reiner. It's a big, muscled rendering, of course, with a string section that must be at least double of what Paul Sacher had at the premiere with his Basel Chamber Orchestra. Boulez conducts stoically, almost with a priestly kind of dignity, with minimal movements but to great dramatic effect. Despite the size of the ensemble, there was an overarching sense of clarity, with the big lines weaving themselves effortlessly through the whole structure. The pacing was excellent too with appropriate gravitas in the slow movements and a punchy kind of urgency in the Allegros. I will certainly return to this performance.

The program notes were also very informative. I particularly liked the succinct but very clear description of the piece's overall architecture:

It consists of four movements that seem to be sprinting through the history of musical forms. The study trip begins with a chromatic fugue, whose even-numbered entries open out in rising fifths from the initial A, while the odd-numbered entries descend by fifths, a pattern then reverse with the theme inverted (and from the entrance of the celesta, mirrored) until the music concludes in unison on the concluding A. Taking a step forward, historically speaking (from Baroque to Classical), the second movement represents a sonata form. Next comes an adagio in Bartok's favoured, strictly symmetrical arch form, and finally, a Rondo-like finale which fuses the elements already introduced in a new language, with a contribution from Bartok's folk music research.