Recommend some good Bartok Qt #4

Wow - I love it!, posted on August 20, 2014 at 11:21:30
Chris from Lafayette Audiophile Posts: 26437 Location: SF Bay Area Joined: February 17, 2004 Contributor Since: February 6, 2012	That "Electric Bartok" you linked to is great! A little bit similar to The Bad Plus doing Rite of Spring:

RE: Recommend some good Bartok Qt #4, posted on August 20, 2014 at 11:25:13

rbolaw

Some, including a regular AA poster, swear by the Juilliard's 1950 Bartok cycle, which helped establish them as one of the world's best string quartets, if not the best.
But, imo the sound quality is truly bad, even by 1950 standards. Another famous old cycle, by the Vegh Quartet, also has very bad sound quality.
The Juilliard's 1963 cycle, in stereo, sounds vastly better. But the cellist then, Claus Adam, had an entirely different approach than original cellist Arthur Winograd, more ensemble oriented. I like the Claus Adam version at least as much as the original, some don't.
Since then, there have been some fine versions, the Emerson Quartet, for example. But none I've heard have yet knocked the Juilliard off the top pedestal.

RE: Recommend some good Bartok Qt #4, posted on August 20, 2014 at 12:00:59
Chris from Lafayette Audiophile Posts: 26437 Location: SF Bay Area Joined: February 17, 2004 Contributor Since: February 6, 2012	Interesting comments about SQ - and I agree with you! SQ is a very important factor (almost a decisive factor!) in selecting a recording of these works IMHO. For this reason, my go-to performance these days is: . . . the Mantovani of Bartok! ;-)

RE: Wow - I love it!, posted on August 20, 2014 at 12:28:02
Travis Audiophile Posts: 6170 Location: La Grange, Texas Joined: November 25, 2001	Heard some excerpts of the Bad Plus version, sounded really stiff. I passed. "If people don't want to come, nothing will stop them" - Sol Hurok

Some good ones..., posted on August 20, 2014 at 15:36:02

andy evans
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Posts: 4378
Joined: October 20, 2000

"Some, including a regular AA poster, swear by the Juilliard's 1950 Bartok cycle"

I found the first movement of this rather underpowered. Of what I've heard, I like Vegh Qt older mono, Hungarian Qt DG stereo, and quite like the Vermeer on casual listening. Also the Fine Arts which I used to have on LP. Keller is pretty OK. Less keen on the Takacs in this work.

Listening right now to and liking the Tokyo DG in this, and I like their DG version of #6 also. They are very focussed, have a lovely sound and bring out the lyrical qualities. Others I should try and hear include the 1963 Juilliard, Tatrai and Zehetmair.

Right now I'm liking the Hungarian on DG - seem to be maybe the most lyrical - and the mono Vegh (love their Beethoven too) but the search goes on.

RE: Recommend some good Bartok Qt #4, posted on August 20, 2014 at 15:48:00
pbarach Audiophile Posts: 3306 Location: Ohio Joined: June 22, 2008	Juilliard 1963 (sound is decent) Takacs Quartet (sound is better, also with more reverb/room sound than Juilliard).

RE: Recommend some good Bartok Qt #4, posted on August 20, 2014 at 17:05:50
steve.ott@kctcs.edu Audiophile Posts: 795 Joined: January 16, 2009	I second Chris von (aus?) Lafayette's recommendation. The whole parkanyi Bartok cycle is good and sounds terrific. Steve O.

You must check Les Noces!, posted on August 21, 2014 at 00:27:55

andy evans
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Joined: October 20, 2000

There's an absolutely stunning performance of Les Noces with electronic keyboards. Pretty much my favourite of all. Rewrites the book for me - this is RUSSIAN!!.

Les Noces - Pokrovsky

I've got it on loop mode - magnificent! - so raw and peasant-like! [nt], posted on August 21, 2014 at 17:09:50
Chris from Lafayette Audiophile Posts: 26437 Location: SF Bay Area Joined: February 17, 2004 Contributor Since: February 6, 2012

Now I know why the 4th is my least favorite..., posted on August 23, 2014 at 06:50:41
krisjan Reviewer Posts: 929 Joined: May 6, 2001	...Bartok quartet. The staccato nature of the instruments used (electric guitar, bass guitar, electric keyboard and drums) completely changes the soundscape by emphasizing the angular/spiky nature of the music IMO. I hear no beauty - just cold, random notes. In the hands of a top quality string quartet (like, e.g., the Parkanyi) one can glean a modicum of beauty even with such atonal writing.

It's very dissonant, but is it atonal?, posted on August 23, 2014 at 16:06:42

Chris from Lafayette
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Location: SF Bay Area
Joined: February 17, 2004
Contributor
Since: February 6, 2012

I hear keys in it (i.e., certain keys more in control than others) when I listen, but maybe that's just me. Didn't some theorist write a long time ago that even when we listen to atonal music (or, even more incredibly, 12-tone music), most of us as listeners (and I'm certainly one) will try to impose a key structure on it as we listen, even though the music itself is deliberately written to orient the listener AWAY from any sense of key structure. (There are some exceptions, such as the Berg Violin Concerto of course.) I guess I just never hear Bartok as being atonal in the sense that the composers of the Second Vienna School are atonal in some of their best known works.

RE: It's very dissonant, but is it atonal?, posted on August 23, 2014 at 16:47:15
rbolaw	Of famous composers I am familiar with, Elliott Carter wins the prize as most insistently atonal. He leaves Bartok far behind, going out of his way to disorient the listener, or orient the listener away from conventional tonality / harmony. At major recitals of his music, one often sees jazz musicians in the audience. Not entirely sure why that is.

To my ear, there is a continuum..., posted on August 23, 2014 at 17:33:42

krisjan
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Joined: May 6, 2001

...that exists between tonal (diatonic) music and strictly atonal music. I was probably a bit rash in labeling Bartok's #4 as "atonal" per se, but it is certainly on the continuum heading towards atonality. The recording that the OP posted simply moved it farther towards atonality than a performance by a conventional string quartet using legato instruments. I have no use for truly atonal music - it irritates me and I find NO beauty whatsoever in it. About the only positive I can muster for atonal music is that I can sometimes admire the craft in it. But, in the end, why bother?

In Bartok's quartet oeuvre, #4 is farthest down the continuum towards atonality with #3 nipping on its heels to my ears/sensibilities. I'm generally fine with the others. Go figure - musical taste is one weird phenomenon!

Music Lane

Recommend some good Bartok Qt #4

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