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I really doubt your assertions

Posted by John Marks (M) on December 28, 2004 at 07:54:47

In Reply to: Bartok and Reiner posted by Skeptic on December 26, 2004 at 15:54:45:

I really doubt your assertions.

Here are the facts.

By 1944 Bartok was gravely ill with the cancer that would within the year kill him.

Reiner did have a large part in obtaining the commission for Bartok to write a new work for Koussevitsky's Boston Symphony Orchestra. Bartok rallied and completed the manuscript of the original version within two months.

During these times, Bartok's weight fell to under 90 pounds and he was close to being on life support, or the equivalent of the time. He was __very__ sick.

The Concerto for Orchestra was premiered in early December 1944. The work was repeated within 30 days. Bartok, however, correctly in my view, decided that the work ended too abruptly, and in early 1945 he wrote a coda--the energetic music that comes after the full stop.

Hopes for Bartok's health were dashed as he again got worse.

Bartok died in mid-1945--TEN YEARS before Reiner recorded the work.

Even if Reiner had conducted the work in 1945, I can't see how Bartok could have known whether the tempo markings in the score correctly followed those in the individual parts, or that the performance indications were as he intended. I can't see how Bartok could have heard the results of Reiner's conducting. Most of all, I can't imagine Bartok being able, in his condition, to hear--let's say over a radio broadcast networked by telephone lines, which was how they often did it--and be in good enough shape to make such judgments.

I am open to persuasion if you can prove Reiner conducted the Concerto for Orchestra before Bartok died, and that Bartok heard it, and that Bartok endorsed the results.

But even then, there are still the issues of the conflict in tempo markings between the parts and the score, and the performance directions, which Solti resolved by reference to the original manuscript of the revised version.

Reiner's remains a hearfelt and idiomatic version conducted from a score with errors in it.

Cordially,

John Marks

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