This new EMI Opendisc CD approaches Bartok from a slightly different perspective; the leader of the Belcea Quartet, Corina Belcea-Fisher, hails from Romania, and considers Bartok much more of a Romanian than Hungarian composer. The town Bartok was born in is now part of modern Romania, and the extensive research he and Kodaly performed in the early part of the twentieth century actually took place in Romania, and many of the folk melodies they studied were of Romanian origin. This disc is sponsored by the Romanian Cultural Institute, and they’re celebrating Romanian artists – like Bela Bartok, for example. Of course, there are so many great recordings of the Bartok String Quartets out there; do we really need another? This is the first string quartet I’m aware of that includes two women as violinists, so it’s at least interesting to see how they stack up against the typically more male-dominated segment of the chamber music genre.
I compared this disc to another I’d recently evaluated by the Arcanto Quartet on Harmonia mundi (also reviewed here). Although that single disc only covers Quartets 5 and 6, and this EMI 2-disc set contains the complete quartets, it is interesting to compare them from performance and recorded sound standpoints. And while the Belcea Quartet offers passionate and idiomatic performances of these works, unfortunately, they don’t compare on any level to the excellent disc from Harmonia mundi. That recording offers a much more realistic impression of the players, with “in your room” realism, all the while accompanied by superb performances (once again forcing me to place a Bartok Vol. 2 from the Arcanto Quartet on my wish list). This EMI disc is really very good – it just doesn’t possess the same sonic sparkle that their counterpart from HM has in spades.
— Tom Gibbs
