Béla Bartók : Le Prince de bois (Intégrale)

Album review

It's colorful enough and you can dance to it, but Marin Alsop and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra's 2008 recording of Bartók's The Wooden Prince is overall pretty dull. It's not that Alsop doesn't grasp the score. She clearly knows how to accent the rhythms and how to keep the tempos moving in the ballet's seven big dances. But the rhythms and dances sound deracinated with nothing of the big Hungarian beat that drives Antal Dorati's classic 1957 Mercury recording with the London Symphony Orchestra. In the "Fourth Dance," Alsop's flowing tempo misses the grotesque character of the music, which Dorati's headlong gallop catches to perfection. And it's certainly not that the Bournemouth Symphony can't play the notes. A finely polished orchestra since the '60s, the southern England band has a tight ensemble with plenty of first-rate woodwind soloists. But their colors are not bright enough for Bartók's score. The dappled sonorities of the Bournemouth's opening Molto moderato and the sculpted waves of sound in the "Second Dance" are nowhere near as edgy as they need to be to make the music work. While Alsop's fans may reasonably find aspects of this performance to admire, those who don't already know the work are directed toward Dorati's Mercury recording. Naxos' digital sound is round and full, not the qualities one looks for Bartók recordings.
© TiVo

Details of original recording : 53:38 - DDD - Enregistré à la Salle de concert de Lighthouse, Poole (UK) en mai 2007 - Notes en anglais & allemand