Bartok: Concerto for Orchestra / Kodaly: Peacock Variations;

Erich Leinsdorf's 1962 version of Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra has certainly come up with astounding vividness in RCA's latest 24-bit remastering--nowhere more so than in the irrepressible finale, which bounds along here with a giant confidence. Ultimately, though, Leinsdorf's interpretation is simply too slick to convince. Sure, the corporate virtuosity of the Boston orchestra is pretty dazzling--on a purely technical level, the standard of the playing is well up there alongside that on other vintage analogue versions from the Chicago Symphony under Fritz Reiner (RCA) and the London Symphony Orchestra with Antal Dorati (Mercury)--but the music's tangy wit, pathos, and (above all) homesick heartache elude the present team entirely. Fortunately, Ivan Fischer and his dazzling Budapest Festival Orchestra are on hand to provide the necessary antidote; their Philips version positively brims with creative flair and affectionate perception. Bafflingly, Leinsdorf's performance of Kodály's masterly and exhilarating Peacock Variations is something else again, a clear-headed, purposeful reading as sublimely poised as it is splendidly imposing. Once more, the 1963 sound possesses superb, ear-tingling realism. A frustratingly unequal coupling, then, but do try to hear the Kodály. --Andrew Achenbach