Esa-Pekka Salonen
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SIGCD466_Booklet***.qxp_BookletSpread.qxt 20/06/2016 17:41 Page 1 CTP Template: CD_DPS1 COLOURS Compact Disc Booklet: Double Page Spread CYAN MAGENTA Customer YELLOW Catalogue No. BLACK Job Title Page Nos. BARTÓK THE MIRACULOUS MANDARIN DANCE SUITE CONTRASTS Live in Concert Yefim Bronfman Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay Mark van de Wiel Philharmonia Voices Esa-Pekka Salonen 24 1 291.0mm x 169.5mm SIGCD466_Booklet***.qxp_BookletSpread.qxt 20/06/2016 17:41 Page 2 CTP Template: CD_DPS1 COLOURS Compact Disc Booklet: Double Page Spread CYAN MAGENTA Customer YELLOW Catalogue No. BLACK Job Title Page Nos. BÉLA BARTÓK fortnight later centuries of Habsburg 1881 – 1945 monarchy were at an end, and within four BARTÓK months the first Hungarian Soviet Republic The Miraculous Mandarin, Op. 19 (1918-19) had been declared. The unassuming Bartók THE MIRACULOUS MANDARIN (1918-19) 1 Introduction: A bustling city street (Allegro) 3.29 Pantomime in one act found himself, in rapid succession, a Liberal 2 1st Decoy game (Moderato) 3.39 appointee to the Hungarian National Council 3 2nd Decoy game 3.21 ‘An amazing variety of sensations came into and then a member of the Communists’ 4 3rd Decoy game (Sostenuto) 1.39 being in my ears. There are some sudden music directorate. 5 The Mandarin enters … (Maestoso) 7.25 stabbing pains…I feel small ants scratching 6 The girl sinks down … (Allegro) 2.16 and causing an irresistible itching in the It is indeed strange that during these months 7 The tramps leap out … (Sempre vivo) 2.32 depth of my ears.’ For 23 days during October of death, mayhem and revolution Bartók wrote 8 Suddenly the Mandarin's head appears between the pillows 1918 Béla Bartók lay in bed with the the bulk of the composition that he loved and he looks longingly at the girl 3.15 Spanish influenza that was then stalking the more than any: his pantomime, The 9 The terrified tramps discuss how they are to get rid of the Mandarin 2.04 world. His friend Zoltán Kodály worried that Miraculous Mandarin. Strange, too, that the 10 The body of the Mandarin begins to glow (Moderato) 1.49 11 The Mandarin falls on the floor (Più mosso) 2.33 an acute inflammation of the ear might fates would conspire to ensure that he never permanently damage his hearing. Indeed, for saw his work on the Budapest stage during his DANCE SUITE (1923) CONTRASTS (1938) a while after doctors had opened his lifetime. Its stage première there would occur 12 Moderato 3.35 17 Verbunkos (Recruiting Dance) 5.30 eardrum Bartók was intrigued, for he heard in December 1945, in another period of strife 13 Allegro molto 2.19 18 Pihen (Relaxation) 4.39 anything played on the piano three notes and disorder, and just weeks after his death 14 Allegro vivace 3.07 19 Sebes (Fast Dance) 6.50 higher than normal! far away in New York. 15 Molto tranquillo 3.27 16 Commodo – Finale 5.00 Although Bartók survived the ‘flu, and his Bartók’s scenario originated in 1916 as a PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA YEFIM BRONFMAN PIANO hearing soon returned to normal, Hungary pantomime grotesque by Melchior Lengyel. PHILHARMONIA VOICES (The Miraculous Mandarin only) ZSOLT-TIHAMÉR VISONTAY VIOLIN was in terminal turmoil. The day after Bartók The Hungarian dramatist (later Hollywood ESA-PEKKA SALONEN CONDUCTOR MARK VAN DE WIEL CLARINET crawled off his sickbed, the Hungarian screenwriter) had hoped to interest Bartók’s premier was assassinated. Four days later the renowned friend Ernst von Dohnányi in writing Total timings: 68.33 Austro-Hungarians achieved armistice, a something to rival the successes of the www.signumrecords.com 2 3 2 3 291.0mm x 169.5mm SIGCD466_Booklet***.qxp_BookletSpread.qxt 20/06/2016 17:41 Page 3 CTP Template: CD_DPS1 COLOURS Compact Disc Booklet: Double Page Spread CYAN MAGENTA Customer YELLOW Catalogue No. BLACK Job Title Page Nos. pre-War Ballets Russes. But it was, rather, prostitute is tentative and fumbling. Gradually, construction, and shows his abilities in writing divided; the critics ranged from adulatory to Bartók who in the summer of 1917 started to however, his excitement grows, as does her for orchestra at their very finest. This music is apoplectic. The reputation of the music sketch out some ideas. By September 1918 revulsion. She tries to break away, but he about as discordant as Bartók ever became, director of the Cologne Opera, the Hungarian these ideas were taking more concrete form. pursues her in a classic chase scene (full and it is impossible to divorce the Jen Szenkár, was on the line. On the following To his wife and son he wrote: ‘If it works out it orchestra, with drums). overwhelming sense of angst in this Monday morning the young conductor was will be a devilish piece. Its beginning – a very pantomime from the chaos of his everyday life summoned before the Mayor of Cologne, short introduction before the curtain opens – Writing in March 1919 Bartók described what in disintegrating Hungary. Konrad Adenauer (later West Germany’s first is a terrible din, clattering, rattling, hooting.’ then happens: ‘The [pimps] attack him, rob Chancellor): how could it ever have crossed him, smother him in a quilt, stab him with a Despite the white-heat of Bartók’s creativity in Szenkár’s mind to perform such a ‘dirty The Mandarin story is simple. It stars one sword – but their violence is to no avail. They these fateful months, the final form of The piece’? Without discussion, Adenauer female prostitute, three male pimps and three cannot cope with the Mandarin, who Miraculous Mandarin came about with tighter promptly banned the work. Szenkár male clients: an old man, a young student and continues to look at the girl with love and temperature control. Although most of the considered resigning but was persuaded by a ‘weird’ oriental gentleman. Against the sonic longing in his eyes.’ This man from another music was composed in 1918-19, he only Bartók to stay on to fight another day. backdrop of the grimy city, the prostitute sets world does not play by the normal rules. wrote it out for full orchestra in 1924, when a to work in luring clients (seductive clarinet Somehow, he turns the tables on the première looked imminent. But he continued As well as the full pantomime version, music). The old man (snarling brass) is comic prostitute. She is made to feel genuine to play with the pantomime’s later parts until Bartók prepared a shorter suite, which ends and knows the score (no money, no sex), so is emotion, to realise that she, too, can 1931, ever trying to ensure that it remained as mid-way through the story, after the Chase given short shrift by the pimps. The young experience the power of love. Bartók lean and as mean as possible. Bartók was scene. He hoped that it might prove a more student (oboe) is shy and nervous, and concludes: ‘Finally, feminine instinct helps, keen to avoid the accusations of ‘dramatic attractive option for concert performance; engages the prostitute more deeply (bassoon) and the girl satisfies the Mandarin’s desire; padding’ levelled against his ballet The indeed, it has a very satisfying musical, even but, despite his growing passion, he too is only then does he collapse and die.’ Wooden Prince. symphonic, coherence to it, despite the obviously a waster. obvious truncation of the plot. This This devilish Mandarin music is Bartók’s Although The Miraculous Mandarin failed to abbreviated form was premièred in Again the prostitute sets to work (more answer to Stravinsky’s ballet Le sacre du grace the Budapest stage in Bartók’s lifetime Budapest in 1928 under the baton of the desperate and higher clarinet music). The printemps (The Rite of Spring). While he is he did manage to see it live just once: at its composer for whom Lengyel had originally Mandarin emerges (the percussion gain a less rhythmically daring than the Russian, he controversial première at the Cologne Opera in intended the libretto of The Miraculous fuller workout), although interplay with the is just as boldly fragmentary in its 1926. The audience was rowdy and irrevocably Mandarin: Ernst von Dohnányi. 4 5 4 5 291.0mm x 169.5mm SIGCD466_Booklet***.qxp_BookletSpread.qxt 20/06/2016 17:41 Page 4 CTP Template: CD_DPS1 COLOURS Compact Disc Booklet: Double Page Spread CYAN MAGENTA Customer YELLOW Catalogue No. BLACK Job Title Page Nos. Dance Suite (1923) Ernst von Dohnányi produced a Festival Bartók’s suite uses ‘idealised’ peasant music did draft a Slovak-styled movement as well – it Overture, Zoltán Kodály the Psalmus in various ethnic styles. That is, the themes are was to occur after the second movement – but Moderato Hungaricus and Bartók decided on a suite of of his own devising but according to a variety removed it in his final revision of the suite. In Allegro molto dances. All three works were premièred on 19 of different stylistic templates. The result is six musical practice, then, Bartók was already Allegro vivace November 1923 under Dohnányi’s direction. short movements, all run together, with a committing to the cultural pluralism that he Molto tranquillo common connecting (ritornello) theme would more publicly and controversially Commodo After four years of writing highly dissonant between most of them. Only between the third advocate in the decade of the 1930s. Finale: Allegro music, where tune and accompaniment were and fourth movements is there a real sense of often in opposition, Bartók’s Dance Suite a break in the music, where this connecting This suite also reveals Bartók as an On 17 November 1873 the three sister cities marked a retreat into greater consonance.