Orchestral Workouts

Back to Bartok and that Concerto For Orchestra that coincidentally featured on the new BBC Music mag cover disk for this month. The recording here is by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Georg Solti and it is accompanied on this disk by Dance Suite and the suite from The Miraculous Mandarin. The LSO relish the chance to play these scores. The concerto was written when Bartok was at a very low ebb in New York during WW2 and was commissioned as an attempt by well wishers to give him a boost. It is a fine orchestral showcase but the content indicates Bartok's unsettled state of mind, with intimations of the war and homesickness as well as some bitterness about his situation in the US. There is the curious disparaging referencing of Shostakovich's 7th symphony, which was receiving much war related acclaim at the time, in a movement that juxtaposed it with a sweeping pastoral tune. The Dance Suite was commissioned to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the union of the twin cities of Buda and Pest. It has folk like themes without quoting directly from any known tunes, similar to the practice of Dvorak. The Miraculous Mandarin was a scandalous piece because of the content of the storyline with lowlifes, love for sale and violent murder, not to say racist undertones. Bartok called it more of a pantomime than a ballet and it is more often played as a concert piece than staged as a theatrical work. A thoroughly modern, abrasive work which despite the title doesn't conatin much in the way of orientalism.