| Violin Concerto No. 2 | |||
| 1 | Allegro non troppo | 16. 39 | |
| 2 | Andante tranquillo | 10. 35 | |
| 3 | Allegro molto | 12. 21 | |
| Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. Posth. | |||
| 4 | Andante sostenuto | 9. 21 | |
| 5 | Allegro giocoso | 12. 03 | |
| Total playing time: | 61.12 | ||

Béla Bartók
PTC 5186350 Download |
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Whilst unfulfilled passion and unrequited love have driven many to depression, Béla Bartók was able to sublimate such personal disappointment into exuberant creativity. In February 1908, after his passionate courting attempts had been rejected by the Swiss violinist, Stefi Geyer, Bartók wrote her: "Having read your letter, I sat down at the piano – and had the sad premonition that, in life, music is to be my only consolation." He illustrated these lines with a musical quotation which included the broken major-seventh chord, c-sharp – e – g-sharp – b-sharp, adding the words: "This is your leitmotiv." It will have been particularly bitter for the composer that he had completed the score of the violin concerto, which had been written for Stefi, and into which he had poured his profound feelings for her, just a few days before her rejection. It is also to her that he dedicated the concerto, which, as in "a narcotic dream" (Römer), had been inspired a year earlier by his intoxicating love for her, but he did not do so without adding a tragic poem by Béla Balázs to the autograph score. Stefi Geyer kept the score until her death in 1956, without every performing the concerto publicly. It was not until 30 May 1958, thirteen years after Bartók's death, that the concerto finally had its first public performance, in Basel, under the baton of Paul Sacher, with Hansheinz Schneeberger as soloist. |
Here’s yet another fearsomely talented young violinist making her mark on CD, this time the German-Japanese Arabella Steinbacher. She brings great warmth to the lyrical First Concerto by Bartók, written as an act of unreciprocated love for violinist Stefi Geyer, then in the more ambitious and challenging Second Concerto she introduces a thrilling touch of steel into her playing. The Orchestre de la Suisse Romande is on fine form, with outstanding contributions from the brass section.
Geoffry Norris, The Telegraph
Highest Recommendation
Richard S Foster, HiFi+ magazine
For these concertos together, then, the present disc is a sure first choice – enhanced by high –impact PentaTone SACD sound and a readable note from Franz Steiger
Richard Whitehouse, International Record Review
Munich native Arabella Steinbacher, who impressed yours truly with her earlier PentaTone release of violin concertos by Dvo?ák and Szymanowski, has done it again in even finer style in her account of the two Violin Concertos of Hungarian composer Béla Bartók.
Dr. Phil Muse, Atalanta Audio Society
Steinbacher and Janowski deserve special praise for approaching these two very different concertos in distinctive but equally effective ways.
infodad.com
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Arabella Steinbacher and Marek Janowski offer us Bartok in 3D. the three dimensions not only spatial but emotional as well. I can’t think of a version of the Second Concerto, past or present, where structure and content are more thoughtfully balanced or where significant points in the score are more lovingly underlined.
Rob Cowan, Gramophone