Vertical integration and Bartók
Someone recently handed me a CD of a piano transcription of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. (The recording, by Gyorgy Sandor, is available through Amazon.) Sandor himself completed the transcription after Bartók’s death — he was a friend of Bartók’s and a champion of his music.
I listened to the recording last night and it was splendid - revelatory, spare, motoric, all-Bartók.
The same person who handed me the CD asked me today why the piano transcription isn’t more famous. I had less than no idea (see viola jokes) and so I asked a very experienced retired pianist. He had no idea either. But here is his guess:
“Sandor probably held onto the sheet music. I’ve never heard of this transcription.”
So it may be a vertical integration problem. Sandor, who died in 2005, was the performer of this music, the source of the final version of the transcription (Bartók did quite a bit before he died in 1945, but Sandor finished it off), and, in the end, its gatekeeper - and as a result pianists just don’t know about it.
But now you do. If you’re a pianist, spread the word.