Bartok: The Miraculous Mandarin & Concerto for Orchestra

Cristian Măcelaru and the WDR Sinfonieorchester set Bartók’s two great orchestral statements side by side, one a theatrical scandal and the other a late triumph. Christoph Vratz’s liner essay traces how the dance pantomime The Miraculous Mandarin, Sz. 73, drawn from a story by Menyhért Lengyel, provoked one of the biggest theatre scandals of the Weimar Republic when it premiered in Cologne on November 27, 1926. The mayor of Cologne at the time, Konrad Adenauer, had all further performances cancelled. Bartók described its opening as a “terrible clamour,” leading his audience from a cosmopolitan street into an Apache camp. The plot, in which three ruffians force a girl to lure men in, centres on a Mandarin who cannot be killed until the girl’s embrace releases him from his longing. Recorded here in its complete form, it brings out the score’s brutal, expressionist force.

The Concerto for Orchestra, Sz. 116, was written in 1943 in exile in the United States. Serge Koussevitzky persuaded the ailing Bartók to compose a new work for the Boston Symphony, and his health began to improve as he started to write. It was premiered in Boston on December 1, 1944, and was a triumph. Its title reflects how instruments and groups step forward as soloists, as in the “Presentation of the couples” second movement and the “Interrupted interlude,” which quotes Shostakovich’s “Leningrad” Symphony, Lehár’s The Merry Widow and the Hungarian song “Ungarn, du bist schön.” Recorded at the Cologne Philharmonie, the album pairs two sides of Bartók, the confrontation with cruel reality and the sweeping symphonic voice of his last years.

WDR Sinfonieorchester
WDR Rundfunkchor
Cristian Măcelaru, conductor