Gidon Kremer is by turns sublimely lyrical and bracingly driven in the First Violin Concerto… the interplay with the woodwind of the Berlin Philharmonic in the second movement is delightfully cheeky, as it is with Yuri Bashmet in a masterful account of the Viola Concerto.

And so Pierre Boulez's DG survey of Bartók's major orchestral works draws to a close. This final instalment opens with an Abbey Road taping of a masterpiece (the two-piano Sonataturned- Concerto) then alternates two fouryear- old Berlin Philharmonic recordings – the richly scored and erotically charged First Violin Concerto and the pared-down, largely ascetic Viola Concerto, an incomplete last testament rendered performable by the violaplayer Tibor Serly. Yuri Bashmet treats the opening with considerable freedom and is consistently responsive to the score's more lyrical passages, though both he and Boulez bring a touch of menace to the closing moments of the slow movement.
Gidon Kremer sounds equally unfettered at the start of the Violin Concerto's gorgeous first movement but come the dizzy antics of the Allegrogiocoso he engages more with play than with reverie. In fact from around 2'20” he sounds positively bored – very unlike him (he's a favourite player of mine).
Boulez has spoken about the 'Concerto' orchestration of the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion as adding 'a different dimension' to the Sonata, especially in the first movement, and he substantiates his claim with a performance that is typically transparent and attentive in matters of balancing, the brass fanfares at around 9'16” in the first movement so vividly reminiscent of parallel passages in the Second Piano Concerto. Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich, although technically brilliant, keep a relatively low profile, which makes for added intimacy in the first movement's busy, often humorous badinage but rather mutes the rhythmic impact of the finale's opening. Greatly preferable is the stark, demonically driven spirit of the original – the Concerto pulls punches that the Sonata delivers in full – but Boulez's performance states a strong case for the plusher concerto alternative.