RECORDS / Victims and victors of love: Stephen Johnson and Robert Cowan compare notes on Bartok and Faure

BARTOK: The Wooden Prince; Cantata profana. Solo singers, Chicago Symphony Chorus and Orchestral / Pierre Boulez (DG 435 863-2)

BARTOK's three stage works might be subtitled 'Aspects of Love' - Bluebeard holding fast to secrecy in the face of potential seduction; the Miraculous Mandarin expressing his libido even on the verge of death; and the Prince, taunted by the object of his love but ultimately able to shame her into abandoning the vanity of appearances. All combine desire and anger, love and disdain, chauvinism and humility, with Bartok himself emerging as both victim and victor. The Wooden Prince, the second of the three, is by far the weakest - there's little hint of the gut-wrenching intensity that fires the Mandarin, or of Bluebeard's incubating gloom - but it is more listener-friendly than the others, its fairy-tale world full of delicately aromatic orchestration, towering climaxes and seamless, vaguely ethnic melodies.

Boulez's brilliantly recorded new version is both massive and easygoing; his orchestra produces huge waves of pitch-black sonority, topped by high percussion and felicitous woodwinds. Neeme Jarvi (Chandos) rises to Bartok's theatrical bait with more obvious enthusiasm, though Boulez displays a comprehensive understanding of the score's inner workings. But as appealing as the Prince often is, the king here is unquestionably the Cantata profana - a symmetrically-fashioned masterpiece, full of sexy syncopations and astringent harmonies, with Hungarian soil clinging to its every step. Boulez's performance is the best ever recorded, with excellent singing (in Hungarian), superb playing and spectacularly fine sound. RC

IN WHAT sense 'Profane'? Cantata profana is no Carmina Burana - naughty knights and drunken monks hymning Venus and throwing themselves into displays of proto-minimalist rollicking. Bartok's interest was in the wisdom contained in a pre-Christian Romanian legend - in this case a strangely moving allegory on the old theme of leaving the parental nest - and in the sharply distinctive folk music that grew out of it. Boulez-detractors will no doubt disbelieve this on sight, but I found that his performance captured the ambiguous atmosphere beautifully. And for the insights he brings to passage after passage I can put up with the dull, backwardly-placed choral sound.

The message in the story of The Wooden Prince still eludes me, but Boulez shows that musically there's more to Bartok's 'Ballet- pantomime' than a rag-bag of fantastic or alluring details; the ideas do cohere around something, and the 'in my beginning is my ending' scheme has a compelling inner logic. As usual, Boulez's feeling for detail brings ideas looping out of rich textures throughout this 55-minute musical adventure, and this time the recording serves the sounds well enough - though it's a shame some of the Chicago Symphony players couldn't have turned their pages a little more quietly. SJ

FAURE: Piano Quartets Nos 1 & 2. Emanuel Ax (piano), Isaac Stern (violin), Jaime Laredo (viola), Yo-Yo Ma (cello) (Sony Classical SK 48 066).

THERE are rumours that Faure's music is effete and lacking in resilience, and the rumours' perpetrators include a handful of Faure interpreters. So I was relieved to encounter a coupling of two great Faure chamber works that doesn't make the mistake of presenting this most subtle of late-Romantics with kid gloves. Nevertheless, these refreshingly outgoing performances go too far in the opposite direction. No 1 is largely successful, although turn to the old Marguerite Long / Pasquier Trio recording and, within minutes, Long's cleaner articulation, her more idiomatic phrasing and the extra vividness of her keyboard personality strike home.

The First Quartet is exuberant, but the Second is a far darker beast, one that casts a backwards glance to Cesar Franck's stormy Piano Quintet (of roughly 10 years earlier), and calls for an even wider range of interpretative subtlety. Ax blows through the opening like a whirlwind, an exciting gesture but one that undermines the music's very definite pulse; he makes the last movement's second set sound too much like Brahms and seems more preoccupied with line than with the life between the notes. I've not mentioned the string playing, which is mostly wonderful, but I felt I was listening more to a pianist accompanying great string players than to an important participant in an urgent musical argument. RC

A ROBUST, big-hearted Faure strides forward right at the start of the First Quartet. Repetitive accompanying figures churn and pound energetically and the big tunes stand centre stage and sing out boldly. The finales of both quartets are driven with impressive determination, and the untypically hard-edged Scherzo of No 2 is presented as a clear prophecy of 20th-century devilry - the Shostakovich Second Trio is struggling to be born.

Does it work? In the First Quartet I think the Stern-Laredo- Ma-Ax vision makes a plausible alternative to the delicacy and introspection of the justly-praised Domus recording (Hyperion). The finer shades may be missing, but the grand sweep of it all is compelling. No 2 though is a different matter. The ferocity of the Scherzo may convince, but to me the finale is just relentless - the tunes don't take off - nor do the long, aspiring lines of the Adagio or the first movement coda really blossom. The problem, it seems to me, is that the players often try just that bit too hard. If there's a message here, it's that Faure can't be forced to yield his secrets. SJ