Composer: Béla Bartók
Orchestra: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Thomas Dausgaard
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Onyx
Release: 2021
Size: 1.27 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
The Miraculous Mandarin, Op. 19, Sz. 73 (ballet)
01. I. Introduction
02. II. 1st Decoy Game
03. III. 2nd Decoy Game
04. IV. 3rd Decoy Game
05. V. The Mandarin Enters
06. VI. Dance of the Girl
07. VII. The Chase
08. VIII. Suddenly the Mandarin’s Head Appears
09. IX. The Mandarin Falls on the Floor
Hungarian Peasant Songs for orchestra, BB 107, Sz. 100
10. I. Romance
11. II. Allegro
12. III. Allegretto
13. IV. Allegro
14. V. Largamento
15. VI. Moderato
16. VII. Allegro moderato
17. VIII. Allegro
Suite No. 2, Op. 4, BB. 40, Sz. 34
18. I. Comodo
19. II. Allegro scherzando
20. III. Andante
21. IV. Comodo
Bartók’s ‘The Miraculous Mandarin’ (published as ‘A Pantomime in One Act’) was composed at a time of violent unrest in Hungary. The Soviet Hungarian Republic had collapsed in 1919 and was replaced by an ultra-nationalist regime which persecuted communists, Jews and leftists and left over 1,500 dead and thousands imprisoned without trial.
It is against this bloody political and social backdrop that the composer, recovering from Spanish Flu, set about a musical depiction of Lengyel’s ‘pantomime grotesque’.
Prior to this period, and after the large-scale Suite No.1 of 1905, Bartók commenced work on a second suite. Smaller in scale than No.1 it is imbued with the folk music he had been studying. It was premiered in 1910.
Bartók was spared service in World War I after failing several medicals. He spent the war years collecting folk songs and some of these provided material for the Hungarian Peasant Songs, which he returned to in 1933 and orchestrated.
This album is the second in a survey of all the composer’s works for orchestra by Thomas Dausgaard and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.