Paavo Järvi’s NHK Symphony Orchestra pride themselves on their Central European sound, particularly their cultured, rounded string tone, and perform a lot of Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler for their Tokyo audience. Here they take a trip eastwards along the Danube to Budapest for a trio of works by Béla Bartók rooted in Hungarian dance rhythms, two of which were commissioned by Paul Sacher for his Basel Chamber Orchestra.

The NHK play with admirable precision in these 2017 concert performances recorded in Suntory Hall, but they’re not completely inside the Hungarian idiom. Part of that is down to cautious tempos. Bartók was meticulous in his metronome markings. The scores to the Divertimento and the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta state the precise timings of each movement; indeed, the third and fourth movements of the latter break down those timings into multiple sections. Comparisons with Hungarian conductors such as Georg Solti, Zoltán Kocsis and Fritz Reiner reveal that Järvi is frequently the slowest, often by quite a wide margin. The opening Andante tranquillo of the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta takes a soporific 8'54" where Kocsis hits Bartók’s 6'30" on the nose. Only the second-movement Allegro really has the tautness required. The NHK are not helped by the RCA recording, which is warm and glosses over detail, whereas the wide stereo definition of Solti’s 1963 Kingsway Hall recording with the London Symphony Orchestra allows clear definition of the two string groups, crucial in this work.

The Divertimento suits the large NHK string band best, particularly the glowing violas in the Molto adagio, where Järvi expertly turns the screw to gradually build the tension as the music leads to a long series of trills. And the Allegro assai finale features some sweet-toned contributions by the NHK’s (unnamed) leader.

Järvi is at his liveliest in the Dance Suite, especially in the wry bassoon contributions at the start, but the recorded balance favours the strings too much, meaning the woodwinds lack pungency and the rude trombone interjections at the start of the Allegro molto are rather too well-behaved. Ultimately, though, do these performances really swing? Do they really dance? Sadly, not so much.