By I. Giles |Amazon Verified Purchase This well recorded disc made in 2009 brings together the most obvious coupling of the two violin concertos by Bartok. This is not the first such pairing but it is one of the most enjoyable, largely as a result of its emphasis on the lyrical perspectives of the two works. This latter point is an important one to consider as it is the reason for one reviewer to give this a poor rating and the reason for the other reviewers to give the disc a high rating. Philosophically it is reasonable to say that any work of art, however cleverly worked out and constructed, must communicate in order to succeed. I would go further and suggest that it must also communicate via its own medium. Thus a musical work must communicate musically, a visual work of art must communicate visually and so on. It should not be necessary for an explanation in words or other presentation to be given for that work of art to communicate. In this case the issue revolves around whether the second concerto communicates and how it communicates. The reviewers who comment that this performance works for them because of its more lyrical nature are simply registering that Arabella Steinbacher has successfully identified a way to communicate Bartoks music and has done this by emphasising the lyrical nature of both works. She has not distorted the works or told a musical lie. Bartok has indeed written lyrical works here. There is another point of view and that is that Bartok has written tough and spiky works that must be endured to some extent in order to appreciate them. This seems to be the view of another reviewer and he suggests that Steinbacher has sold Bartok short by softening his wilder side. I would disagree and suggest that performances of the sort that he suggests have failed to communicate an enjoyment of Bartoks music as this one certainly has, and it is those performances that have indeed sold Bartok short. In my view, I have always felt that the second concerto is a masterpiece, and that any difficulty that I found in following the music for total enjoyment was my error rather than Bartoks. Enlightenment came for me with the recording made many years ago with Silverstein. Since then I have enjoyed several performances, most recently this one by Steinbacher as well as those by Chung, Ehnes and Zehetmair. I found the most successful Hungarian performance to be that by Denes Kovacs with the Budapest S.O. on Hungaroton but no longer available. That blended the wilder and the lyrical elements very satisfyingly. At the present time I would suggest that Steinbacher is the most easily enjoyable version currently available even if the wilder Hungarian aspects are somewhat muted. I would suggest that Arabella Steinbachers performance here might be the best place to start an enjoyment of this music. Only when feeling more familiar with the idiom would I then suggest trying one of the tauter interpretations listed above but they too are not the only way to perform them as Steinbacher clearly demonstrates.