Cornelius Meister is by no means the first conductor to pair Bartók's first and last works for orchestra on disc. His performances with the Austrian national broadcaster, ORF, may be very accomplished, but they face tough competition from Herbert Blomstedt on Decca and Iván Fischer for Philips. In two works that, in very different ways, place an emphasis on virtuosity and swagger, the ORF band is not quite a match for either Blomstedt's San Francisco Symphony or Fischer's Budapest Festival Orchestra. In both the Concerto for Orchestra and the set of Romanian Dances included as an extra, there is plenty of characterful, extrovert playing, but Kossuth, composed in 1903 when Bartók was very much in thrall to Richard Strauss's symphonic poems, needs much more cogency and tightly focused energy if it is not to seem just episodic, and for its patriotic fervour to sound anything more than contrived.