Opera

Given its absence of stage action, Bartók’s symbolist masterpiece goes well on disc, just as it does in the concert hall. Recorded live (with a bit of studio topping up) at the Helsinki Music Centre in January 2020, this latest version has a number of pluses. With the Hungarian libretto, the nationality of both the Judith (Szilvia Vörös) and the Prologue’s narrator (Géza Szilvay) is a clear asset, while the Finnish language – the native tongue of Mika Kares’s Bluebeard – turns out to be related to Bartók’s Hungarian. Both singers possess the scale, range and richness required to take on his sizable orchestration: the orchestra, indeed, almost represents a third character in the opera