Bart

In Europe Bela Bartok's piano concerto has been hailed as his most mature, his strongest work, as the real Bartok, maker of naked, unashamed music. It was, fairly enough, to have served him for his U. S. debut (TIME, Jan. 2). But Conductor Willem Mengelberg of the New York Philharmonic looked it over; pronounced it too difficult, rehearsal time too short; substituted the less characteristic Rhapsody. Last week Fritz Reiner and his Cincinnati Symphony with Bartok himself for soloist, dared the concerto. Manhattan critics disagreed.

Said Samuel Chotzinoff (World): "Its belated appearance brought neither joy nor understanding to this reporter."

Pitts Sanborn (Telegram): "... A mad attempt to catch up with Stravinsky, expressing itself largely in the sort of sonorous tappings that a young and well-fisted child perpetrates when confronted with the keyboard of a piano."

Lawrence Gilman (Herald-Tribune): "... A new language, harsh, abrupt, austere; a language that disdains to woo us, that would be ashamed to move us ... unquestionably a work to respect."