Antal Doráti, István Kertész & London Symphony Orchestra - Kodály: Orchestral Works (2010)

This is a release that's exceptionally nice to see from the majors, a modestly priced four-disc boxed set of Zoltan Kodály's orchestral music in the Decca Collector's edition series. This contains pretty much all of Kodály's relatively small output for orchestra in addition to including the complete singspiel Hary János, led by conductors who were particularly passionate about Kodály as both of them numbered among his former students Antal Dorati and István Kertész. These are not the most recent recordings of Kodály's orchestral music, but some of them number among the best; the one conductor who might disagree with this view would be Georg Solti, who also recorded his fair share of Kodály and also for Decca, but his Kodály recordings are already collected in releases geared toward Solti himself. The performance of Hary János is done in English, featuring a cast led by Peter Ustinov; there is no libretto included but if you speak English you won't need one. All of the performances are spirited, well-drilled, and authoritative, and Kodály's music for orchestra is really worth the effort; it has the same qualities of quirky folksiness and wry humor that one associates with Bartók's orchestral music but isn't as dark or aggressively modern as Bartók. Overall, this is a bargain one could hardly imagine back in the days of analog media, especially if the listener was on the buying end of all the separate London LPs these recordings originally appeared on. ~ Dave Lewis