Bela Bartok - Complete Solo Piano Music (Vox)

I know, I know, everybody’s got the Zoltan Kocsis set on Philips, and one can hardly blame you. Yes, there’s also Gyorgy Sandor’s digital remakes, without Microcosmos, of the mid 1990s, very good in their own right; let’s not, however, forget Sandor’s pioneering set of the early 1960s—a bit looser, rhythmically and otherwise, but very nicely recorded, not to mention cheap as hell! I just bought the set for about $20, not bad for five generously filled discs.

Sandor died about a year ago, at the ripe old age of 94, and that fact got me thinking that I’d never really studied his earlier Bartok survey. I remember being stunned by the Sony digitals when I bought them in 1997—poetic, forceful and often down-right dazzling, especially given his age when recording them. The Vox set is more complete, though it doesn’t match Kocsis for the kitchen sink syndrome, and the pianism is certainly a bit more solid. What had me concerned was the terrible vinyl versions I used to hear at Eastman, which kept me right off these fine performances for years.

The 2003 remastering is worlds better than anything I’d imagined; the recording is a bit dry but beautifully imaged, as nice on headphones as over the speakers. I should note, however, that vinyl was used for some portions of the fourth and fifth discs, but the transfer was well done, from, astonishingly where Vox is concerned, a fairly good-sounding copy! My only real complaint about the programming is that each book of Microcosmos is a single track. Beyond that, the set is superb.

Sandor’s credentials are in no need of rehearsal here; the fact that he knew and studied with Bartok, premiering the third piano concerto after the composer’s death, is ultimately less significant than the obvious delight he takes in these seminal keyboard works. A bargain, a must-have, and, might I suggest, a good stocking stuffer.

~ Marc Medwin