Fourteen routes partially abandoned, all of them worth exploring. Bartok himself admitted that his Bagatelles (1908) were largely experimental, and indeed at least half-a-dozen of them could easily have fallen from a jazz-pianist's copybook (Nos. 7, 11 and 12, particularly), their sensual harmonies and capricious rhythmic computations prophetic of so much that was to happen in that world. Debussy, too, is much in evidence (No. 3), as is Bartok's love of folk-song (Nos. 4 and 5) and, by implication, his inflammatory infatuation with violinist Stefi Geyer: the last Bagatelle is musically identical with the second of his Two Portraits, the ''distorted'' version of Bartok's ''Ideal'' (the First Portrait—and the same theme, but slowed down). Like Prokofiev with his Second Symphony, the older Bartok seemed somewhat nonplussed by his own audacity, although the Bagatelles remain among the most enduring of his earlier piano works and Zoltan Kocsis's artfully calculated interpretations realize the full range of their sophisticated boldness.
If the Bagatelles have the programming potential of Prokofiev's similarly fanciful Visions fugitives, then the Elegies would sit nicely among the shorter works of Busoni. These virtuosic effusions recall the moon-flecked world of late Liszt, albeit flushed with a Hungarian rather than a gipsy complexion. Again, Kocsis's readings are absolutely on target, although I'd also be grateful to re-visit Gyorgy Sandor's equally involving Vox performances from the 1960s (4/69—nla). Folk-song proper informs Kocsis's last three selections: the familiar Six Romanian Folk Dances, the cheerful and ingenious Sonatine and the relatively dense Hungarian Folk Tunes, Sz66—the last bringing us to the far edge of the Great War. It's a cliffhanger of a finale, and has us eager for more. But when Philips do come up with a second volume (this CD billed as ''Works for Piano—1''), I sincerely hope that they'll match their generous piano sound with a more generous disc timing. 53'48'' is not exactly good value for a full-price CD, especially if—as here—the promise of 'more to come' suggests potential extra material for the present selection. In other respects, though, this is a peach of disc.'