Bartók: Piano Concertos Nos.1-3
These classic performances were probably the first  recordings of the Bartók Piano Concertos that many of us owned, and they  probably put the music on the international map once and for all. Both Ferenc  Fricsay and Géza Anda, compatriots of the composer, spared no effort in bringing  this music to the widest possible public; and their recordings are not only  important for this reason, but they have also withstood the test of time very  well indeed. They treat these pieces as straightforward, Romantic piano  concertos of the Lisztian "bravura" school, which in many respects  they are. Later performances have explored the music's modernity more probingly,  but that lessens neither the validity of this approach nor the pleasure of the  result.--David Hurwitz