Béla Bartók: Concerto for Viola & Orchestra / Peter Eötvös: Replica / György Kurtág: Movement for Viola & Orchestra - Kim Kashkashian

Kim Kashkashian's interpretation of three Hungarian composers' works for viola is peerless. The viola is a perplexing, complex instrument that always seems out of time, almost out of place with the modern repertory. But the melancholy and directness of the instrument, especially in the hands of such an accomplished performer as Kashkashian, make for a listening experience that is profoundly contemporary. Bartók's Concerto for Viola and Orchestra was one of the last pieces the composer wrote. In a sense unfinished, fragmentary (Paul Griffiths, in his liner notes, says the piece is "partial, imminent, not yet arrived"), the work is balanced by Eötvös's Replica, written especially for Kashkashian and recorded here for the first time. Kurtág's Movement, his graduation exercise presented to the Liszt Academy in Budapest in 1954, has a clear Bartókian hue, but also shows the influence of Brahms and Haydn. While it is a youthful work, it is no minor piece and, especially in the context of Kurtág's usual miniatures, is a fascinating listening experience. Eötvös shows himself to be a wonderful director, drawing from Kashkashian a precision and subtlety that the masculine viola sometimes lacks, while encouraging the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra to support the fullest exploration of the pieces in hand. This is a remarkable, beautiful, and haunting recording. --Mark Thwaite