Music and Vinyl: Bartók - The Miraculous Mandarin

Béla Bartók (1881-1945) was one of Hungary's greatest composers - certainly of the twentieth century, and is most widely known for his Concerto For Orchestra.

Cape town City Ballet production

The work here, is his ballet suite from The Miraculous Mandarin, which has been described as one of the scariest pieces ever written. The violent and erotic story is based on one by Hungarian writer Melchior Lengyel and involves three thugs who exploit the seductive powers of a beautiful young woman to lure men into their den, where the victims are robbed. The thugs force the girl to stand in the window and dance provocatively. In Bartók’s score this seductive dance, musically depicted by the solo clarinet, occurs three times. The first two men who are lured into the trap are thrown out of the room when the thugs realize they have no money. Then, the exotic Mandarin enters. As the Mandarin is entertained by the girl’s dancing, the thugs rob him. In an attempt to kill the Mandarin, they smother him with a pillow and stab him, but to their horror he remains alive, unaffected by the wounds. Finally, the thugs release the Mandarin. He embraces the girl and, his longing fulfilled, he dies.

Seiji Ozawa

The premiere in Cologne, in 1926, was met with scandalous derision, and at the bidding of the mayor - Konrad Adenauer (later the first chancellor of West Germany after World War II) - the ballet was banned on moral grounds. Matt Fernand, in a BBC review, described the ballet as "a nasty little tale of urban depravity. Here's the moral vacuum of the metropolis meeting a supernatural lust that, at least until it's sated, is the equal of anything the streets can throw at it; Bartok's Mandarin is as resilient as Rasputin."

This 1977 Deutsche Grammophon recording from Boston has the orchestra on splendid form under Seiji Ozawa. This description of the piece and its background from the Los Angeles Philharmonic website is a good supplement to the short sleeve note below.