Béla Bartók - Orchestral Works, Vol. 2 (Thomas Dausgaard)

Information

Composer: Béla Bartók

• (01) The Miraculous Mandarin, Sz. 73
• (10) Hungarian Peasant Songs, Sz. 100
• (18) Suite No. 2, Sz. 34

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Thomas Dausgaard, conductor

Date: 2021

Label: Onyx

https://onyxclassics.com/release/bartok-the-miraculous-mandarin/

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Review

Listening to Bartók’s chilling ‘pantomime grotesque’ The Miraculous Mandarin – complete – in a performance as good as this one you do ask yourself why anyone would programme the Suite any more. There is the small matter – and additional expense – of the wordless chorus, I’ll grant you that, but the apotheosis of the piece and the most extraordinary music arrives with that X-rated final 10 minutes.

Thomas Dausgaard and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra make delicious capital of the score’s illicit colours with trombone glissandos and bluesy pentatonic exoticism laid on with the proverbial trowel. Bartók’s artful mix of the brutal and the sensual –musical sadomasochism at its ugliest and most alluring – is key here and Dausgaard pulls no punches, launching us head-on into the mother of all Manhattan traffic jams with its honking trombones and woodwind brake squeals, then to chronicle the sleaze all the way to a neon-lit entry of the Mandarin.

The clarinet solos are a real come-on here and the call-girl’s seductive dance is as redolent of Strauss’s Salome (minus the veils) as any I’ve heard. I love, too, the way Dausgaard lets his percussion off the leash as Bartók kicks the chase into touch. There’s something really ironic about music’s most formal device – a fugue – being deployed in such a violent context. But there’s a strange and unsettling mysticism too. Such a great score, brilliantly realised.

This is the second instalment of Dausgaard’s Bartók series with the BBC SSO and the Dane harnesses the orchestra’s Celtic fire to terrific effect. There’s a sense of real spontaneity about the folksy source material on the other half of the disc. Bartók’s Hungarian Peasant Songs graduate from piano to orchestra, effortlessly assuming the requisite rustic heft and, yes, even a certain grandiosity.

And there’s a vein of folksiness in the fascinating Suite No 2 – a big work belying a smallish orchestra used with expressive resource. Late Romanticism is upon us and elements of the opening Comodo are borderline hallucinatory. Another fugue – another flash of classicism – is thrown into the mix of the muscle-flexing Scherzo but best of all is the beautiful and dramatic Andante, ushered in as only Bartók could with the most solitary of bass clarinet solos. More, please.

-- Edward Seckerson, Gramophone

More reviews:
ClassicsToday  ARTISTIC QUALITY: 9 / SOUND QUALITY: 9

https://www.classical-music.com/reviews/orchestral/bartok-the-miraculous-mandarin-suite-no-2-etc/

https://www.audaud.com/bartok-the-miraculous-mandarin-dausgaard-bbc-scottish-symph-onyx/

https://www.amazon.com/Bartok-Dausgaard-Scottish-Symphony-Orchestra/dp/B08WHSWSQT

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Béla Bartók (March 25, 1881 – September 26, 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist and an ethnomusicologist. Bartók is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Liszt are regarded as Hungary's greatest composers. Through his collection and analytical study of folk music, he was one of the founders of comparative musicology, which later became ethnomusicology. Bartók's music reflects two trends that dramatically changed the sound of music in the 20th century: the breakdown of the diatonic system of harmony, and the revival of nationalism as a source for musical inspiration.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9la_Bart%C3%B3k

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Thomas Dausgaard (born 4 July 1963 in Copenhagen) is a Danish conductor. Dausgaard has been Principal Conductor of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra since 1997, and chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra since 2016. He was also Principal Conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra from 2004 to 2011, and will become music director of the Seattle Symphony in 2019-2020 season. Dausgaard has recorded several recordings of Danish and other Scandinavian music for Chandos and Dacapo labels, including works by Per Nørgård, Rued Langgaard and Franz Berwald.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Dausgaard

http://thomasdausgaard.com/

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