Béla BARTÓK: Concierto para violín nº 2; Dos rapsodias. Gil Shaham; Orquesta Sinfónica de Chicago; Pierre Boulez. Deutsche Grammophon 459639-2 [63'28"]

Hallelujah! Here is a magnificent recording of my favorite concerto. Gil Shaham presents a lyrical account of the violin part, but, like dedicatee Zoltán Székely in the 1939 world premiere, Shaham delivers every note, every accent in the score. His easy delivery is reminiscent of a great singer; not since Itzhak Perlman has a recording of this concerto presented such natural sounding violin production. Shaham captures the passions of the work without a single squeak or extraneous sound; among past contenders, Zukerman was as smooth but didn't climb the heights, while Mutter emoted fiercely at occasional expense to beauty. A longtime favorite, Tibor Varga with Ferenc Fricsay, had a fine balance of all these ingredients but just missed the peaks of each. Only Székely and Perlman had it all, and only Mengelberg's accompaniment for Székely captured the bright orchestral fires. Although their 1939 live performance is compromised by dismal recorded sound, it remained, until today, my choice recording.

I recently heard Shaham play this work with the New York Philharmonic under Paavo Järvi. That performance was a revelation, bringing the young violinist into my canon of great performers. The Philharmonic made a gripping contribution as well, but the Chicago Symphony is even better. I have not always been a Boulez enthusiast, but here he shines along with Shaham. Orchestral playing is superb, as we have come to expect from the Windy City; it is also always to the point, sensitive as well as opulent, and beautifully balanced, from the softest ppp of the slow movement to the two momentous ff chords that close the work.

Is there nothing to complain about? Well, yes: Bartók's prescribed 32+ minutes have been stretched to 40:32. If I have nagged at every previous violation of the composer's explicit instructions, why not here? Because I don't hear it this time: If timings were not written in the DG booklet, I might not have known. My only excuse is that I am too dazzled by this stunning performance to notice. What about the Hungarian/Magyar folk elements in the score, which can be heard so strongly in Varga/Fricsay and others? Like the Emerson's Bartók String Quartets, this performance is more universal than national; such elements are still present but draw less attention to themselves. The two Rhapsodies, where folk elements do come to the fore, are every bit as fine.

DG's recorded sound is almost as miraculous as the performances; although Shaham plays delicate, exquisite pianissimos, every note from his «Countess Polignac» Stradivarius is heard clearly; the same is true for the orchestra. Much credit is due producer Christian Gansch, recording engineer Wolf-Dieter Karwatky, Tonmeister Stephan Flock, and especially conductor Boulez. All previous bets for the 1999 Want List are hereby hedged; this disc could fill the list by itself. On the other hand, it will help empty my shelves, as a large contingent of former competitors may now be retired; perhaps only Székely will survive the cut.

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Few among Bartók's works for violin are more ingratiating than the Second Violin Concerto and the two Rhapsodies. And few performances match the majesty, verve, atmosphere, and tonal splendor of Gil Shaham's partnership with Pierre Boulez and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The Concerto embraces a wide variety of styles and techniques, from the simple diatonic through the folklike modal to the freely chromatic, 12-tone, and quarter-tone. It also reconciles the rhapsodic freedom and the severe discipline that alternate in Bartók as frequently �and with as startling an effect� as forte and piano in Beethoven. Such a protean work challenges any team, even the most distinguished and stylistically aware; and many fall on one side or the other of the narrow path, lapsing into either colorless discipline or nearly chaotic unruliness. Virgil Thomson once remarked that Bartók's intense expression was inevitably set against a gray background. Yet Shaham and Boulez bring about their reconciliation of opposites in a reading that's brightly colored, free, and rhythmically infectious (if not à la Zingara), while never losing its intellectual balance. In fact, as its melodic outpourings become more spontaneous, the structure paradoxically clarifies itself. Shaham plays with a tonal richness that's becoming recognizably his own. And felicities abound, such as the cheeky lilt that Shaham brings to the finale's main theme (which for once has a life of its own rather than getting dutifully by as a desiccated skeleton of the first movement's theme) or the crystal-clear colors that Boulez extracts in the slow movement's chamberlike passages. Doing full justice to Boulez and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the startlingly clear recorded sound captures both the considerable detail and the lush backdrop against which it's set. In emphasizing more universal values at the expense of Magyar «authenticity», and in the sumptuousness of the orchestral sonorities, Shaham's recording resembles Anne-Sophie Mutter's, which James H. North recommended in Fanfare 15:5. But, due to the wealth and crispness of its detail, as well as in the relationship of soloist and orchestra (Mutter leaves even the Boston Symphony far in the background, while Shaham, though forward, never achieves his dominating position at the expense of the textural balance), Shaham and Boulez's performance surpasses Mutter and Ozawa's.

In the Rhapsodies, not so intellectually ambitious as the Concerto and therefore requiring less ascetic rigor, soloist and orchestra are neither long on paprika nor short on folklike vitality. Joseph Szigeti and Bartók himself set a stylistic norm in the First Rhapsody, and Isaac Stern could decompose this kind of ethnic music into a series of highly effective and dazzlingly communicative gestures. But Shaham and Boulez, coupled with the tonal resources of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, make a different case, based, as in the Concerto, on the Rhapsodies' purely musical values � and of course, on the timbres of their full orchestral scores.

For a single recording of the Second Violin Concerto and the Rhapsodies, it would be hard to beat Shaham and Boulez. Promoted to the head of the class and urgently recommended.