Béla Bartók - The Miraculous Mandarin; Songs & Dances (Iván Fischer)

Information

Composer: Béla Bartók

• Hungarian Peasant Songs, Sz. 100
• Hungarian Sketches, Sz. 97
• Roumanian Folk Dances, Sz. 68
• Transylvanian Dances, Sz. 96
• Romanian Dance, Sz. 47a

Budapest Festival Orchestra

Iván Fischer, conductor

Date: 1997

Label: Philips

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Review

The scenario of The Miraculous Mandarin, set not in the traditional ballet fairyland but in the red-light district of a big city, drew from Bartók one of his most imaginative and thrilling orchestral scores. It receives a performance of dashing virtuosity and passionate conviction from Fischer and his hand-picked Budapest orchestra. The earthy clarinets are outstanding in the ‘Games of Seduction’; the trombones snarl their way through the chase scenes; the strings are vehement in their attack. The impact of the playing is enhanced by the immediacy of the recording, which occasionally exaggerates the spotlighting of solo instruments but appropriately suggests a theatre pit rather than a lofty concert hall. The programme is completed imaginatively by a selection of Bartók’s orchestrations of his piano pieces. Here again the playing is thoroughly idiomatic: the woodwind invest the broken phrases of the ‘Melody’ in the Hungarian Sketches with genuine pathos; the Romanian Folk Dances are played with an exhilarating awareness of the music’s roots in a living tradition.

— Anthony Burton

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Béla Bartók (25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist and ethnomusicologist who is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century. As an ethnomusicologist, his fieldwork with the composer Zoltán Kodály formed the basis for all later research in the field. Bartók employed folk themes and rhythms into his own music, achieving a style that was nationalistic and deeply personal. His notable works include the opera Bluebeard's Castle (1911), 6 string quartets (1908–39), the Mikrokosmos piano set, Concerto for Orchestra (1943), and 3 piano concertos (1926, 1931 & 1945).

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Iván Fischer (born 20 January 1951) is a Hungarian conductor and composer. He studied piano, violin, cello and composition in Budapest, then went on to Vienna to study conducting with Hans Swarowsky and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. In 1983 Fischer founded the Budapest Festival Orchestra, with which he introduced many innovations and educational projects. In the past Fischer was Music Director at Kent Opera, Opéra National de Lyon, the National Symphony Orchestra, and the Konzerthausorchester Berlin. He is also active as a composer and as opera director. His CD recordings for Channel Classics received many prizes.

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