This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

This is Arabella’s second album for PentaTone, her first being the very well received concertos of Szymanowski and Dvo?ák. This recording is one of very few featuring both Bartók concertos on one disc. Bartok's Violin Concerto No. 1 was written in 1907/1908 and was dedicated to the violinist Stefi Geyer, with whom Bartók was in love. Geyer could not reciprocate Bartók's feelings and rejected the concerto, and both kept copies of the work locked in a drawer. It was only recently published in 1956, after the composer's death. The concerto was later championed by David Oistrakh. For many years, Isaac Stern with Leonard Bernstein conducting was the classic recording. His Violin Concerto No. 2 (written in 1937/1938) was dedicated to the Hungarian violin virtuoso, Zoltán Székely. The work was premiered at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam on March 23, 1939 with Zoltán Székely, violin and Willem Mengelberg conducting the Concertgebouw orchestra. It had its United States premiere in Cleveland, Ohio in 1943, with Tossy Spivakovsky and the Cleveland Orchestra under Artur Rodzi?ski. Bartók heard this performance and described it as ‘first rate’. Spivakovsky later gave the New York and San Francisco premières of the work.

"Sensitive, alert performances - she's top class." -- Gramophone

"... here is a brand-new recording of the two Bartok violin concertos by a beautiful 28-year-old violinist— the great 1938 Violin Concerto No. 2 and the 1907-08 Violin Concerto No. 1 that wasn’t first performed until long after Bartok’s death—and it’s absolutely superb in every way with brilliant recorded sound. Steinbacher’s previous disc put together Dvorak’s A-minor concerto and Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto No. 1. She is, then, that invaluable young violin virtuoso who isn’t only a prodigy in HOW to play but WHAT to play."
3 1/2 stars


Jeff Simon, BuffaloNews.com