Four of the greatest of the great Hungarian conductors from the postwar period could be fairly described as
Bartók specialists:
Ferenc Fricsay,
Fritz Reiner,
Georg Solti, and
Antal Dorati.
Fricsay was lucid and driven,
Reiner was hard and strong,
Solti was muscular and dramatic, but
Antal Dorati was brilliant and rhythmic. While
Fricsay,
Reiner, and
Solti were all compelling
Bartók conductors,
Dorati was the most immediately attractive and ultimately irresistible.
Dorati, with his training as a conductor for the Ballet Russ, made not only
Bartók's ballets dance, he made the Concerto for orchestra and the Music for string, percussion and celesta dance. Even the supremely lyrical Violin Concerto, with a passionate
Yehudi Menuhin, is light on its feet and the opera Bluebeard's Castle, despite its dramatic power, moves with grace. The
London Symphony, the
BBC Symphony, the
Minneapolis Symphony, and of course the
Philharmonia Hungarica play as if they were to the czardas born. Mercury's sound was stupendous in its day and it sounds even better now: absolutely clear and undeniably real.