Mandarin

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.

This recording pairs two of Béla Bartók’s most challenging and ingenious works. In the String Quartet No. 3 (which Assistant Principal Viola Stanley Konopka arranged for string orchestra) and Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin, Bartók creates a new musical path forward by masterly combining influences from folk tunes and elements of the avant-garde to create works of lasting power.

This recording pairs two of Béla Bartók’s most challenging and ingenious works. In the String Quartet No. 3 (which Assistant Principal Viola Stanley Konopka arranged for string orchestra) and Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin, Bartók creates a new musical path forward by masterly combining influences from folk tunes and elements of the avant-garde to create works of lasting power.

The Wooden Prince and The Miraculous Mandarin are – together with the earlier opera Bluebeard’s Castle – the only stage works by Béla Bartók. They stand apart from the more abstract and often more explicitly folk-related character of the music that we primarily associate with the composer. They are nevertheless major achievements that in different ways highlight Bartók’s imaginative use of the modern orchestra. Set in an enchanted forest, The Wooden Prince is based on a fairytale-like libretto featuring a prince and princess.

Bartók composed The Miraculous Mandarin (published as ‘A Pantomime in One Act’) at a time of violent unrest in Hungary. The unpleasant 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’.

Bela Bartok was indisputably one of the 20th century's greatest composers; and his very modern approach, leavened with the rhythms of his native Hungary's folk music, are to be found on this recording that pairs his complete 1924 ballet "The Miraculous Mandarin" with his 1936 "Music For Strings, Percussion, & Celesta."

Through his far-reaching endeavors as composer, performer, educator, and ethnomusicolgist, Béla Bartók emerged as one of the most forceful and influential musical personalities of the twentieth century. Born in Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary (now Romania), on March 25, 1881, Bartók began his musical training with piano studies at the age of five, foreshadowing his lifelong affinity for the instrument. Following his graduation from the Royal Academy of Music in 1901 and the composition of his first mature works – most notably, the symphonic poem Kossuth (1903) – Bartók embarked on one of the classic field studies in the history of ethnomusicology. With fellow countryman and composer Zoltán Kodály, he traveled throughout Hungary ……..

From Allmusic