I’m sorry. I tried, but I just don’t seem to like the music of Bela Bartok.
Ferenc Fricsay
This is a shame, because the premise of this particular album is fascinating – one of the last recordings of Ferenc Fricsay, a giant of a conductor, leading the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra through a performance of some of the last works of Bartok and Tchaikovsky.
But where much of the Classical music Tom Moon has exposed me to has inspired and engrossed, I have simply found nothing through three Bartok recordings to grab hold of, to sink my teeth into.
I’m sure there are Bartok fans who will roll their eyes at my naivite, shake their fist at my heresy. Who knows, Moon might be foremost among them. But as I keep discovering through this fascinating journey – “the world don’t move to the beat of just one drum . . .”
By the time we reach the Tchaikovsky here, my attention has already waned, my interest is elsewhere, no matter how many times I play through. Hopefully my experience will be different 15 years or so from now when I reach Tchaikovsky in the T’s where he belongs, rather than this teaser all the way back on Bartok’s coattails.
It is the nature of the way I am tackling the list that when I run into an artist that Tom Moon chooses multiple albums from, if I do not enjoy them as much as him I am stuck for weeks trying to hear what it is that he hears.
On the other hand, when that artist is a revelation, I encounter weeks of unexpected bliss.
So what’s next? I’m ready to hear something different, and some obscure Opera followed by classic big band swing ought to do the trick.
Next Week: Cecilia Bartoli – the Vivaldi Album
Owned before blogging? No. (2 of 53. 4%)
Heard before blogging? No. (4 of 53. 8%)
Recommend? No. (41 of 53. 77%)
