Ehnes/Bpo/Gardner - B?la Bart?k: Concerto for Orchestra, Dance Suite, Rhapsodies Nos 1 & 2

Four years after a highly successful Bart�k recording with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Edward Gardner here returns to the composer on SACD, with James Ehnes as solo violinist, and his Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra. The central piece in this recording is the Concerto for Orchestra, the largest work that Bart�k completed during the last five years of his life and described by the composer, in the programme notes for its 1944 premiere, as �a gradual transition from the sternness of the first movement and the lugubrious death-song of the third, to the lifeassertion of the last one�. It is joined by the Dance Suite, the immediate predecessor, among Bart�k�s few works for full orchestra without a soloist, of the Concerto for Orchestra, though by more than two decades; and by the violin Rhapsodies, the colourful folk influences of which are revealed by James Ehnes, a specialist in the repertoire, who already has recorded the complete sonatas as well as the concertos for violin and for viola to critical acclaim.