Her fifth album for Rubicon finds Sonya Bach as attuned to the music of Bartók as she was to that of Chopin, Rachmaninov and Mussorgsky on previous releases.

Most often seen as the dry run for Bartók’s pantomime The Miraculous Mandarin, the Three Studies constitutes a sonata in all but name. Bach brings resolve to its mechanistic initial Allegro and energy to the intricate textures of its Andante, the final Allegro making a notably assaultive impact. She is equally perceptive in the Sonatina, Bartók’s most perfectly realised folk/art fusion, with a dextrous take on ‘Bagpipes’, a robust response to ‘Bear Dance’ and playfulness in its closing Allegro. The once notorious Allegro barbaro is, as it must be, a study in propulsive momentum and acute physicality.

Progressing to the Four Piano Pieces is to encounter an overtly late-Romantic ethos. Bach makes a persuasive case for the vaunting rhetoric of its left-hand Study, with the florid flights of fancy and fervent passagework of its successive Fantasies lucidly rendered; their Brahmsian density is complemented by the Rachmaninov-like elaboration of the Scherzo. How artful to follow this with the Marcia funèbre from the symphonic poem Kossuth, its sombre fatalism a natural extension of the set that preceded it by just a few weeks.

Closing with the Piano Sonata, the touchstone from which Bartók’s later music emerged in all essentials, makes good sense. Bach marginally over-projects its tensile Allegro moderato, while its baleful slow movement is distinctly more pesante than sostenuto, but she rightly throws caution to the winds in a finale of irresistible élan.

We are hardly lacking in Bartók miscellanies, with those from Zoltán Kocsis (especially on Denon), Andreas Bach (Oehms) and Murray Perahia (Sony) retaining claims on listeners’ allegiance. Yet in illuminating his path to stylistic maturity, Bach’s anthology has much to commend it.

This review originally appeared in the SUMMER 2025 issue of International Piano – Subscribe Today