Customer Reviews

Bartók: The Miraculous Mandarin; Hungarian Peasant Songs; Rumanian Folk Dances

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This Bartok album from conductor Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra is a real treat. It brings wonderful performances of Bartok not often recorded...even Boulez hasn't recorded some of these pieces in his Bartok survery.

In addition to the colorfully, zesty performances of these rare Bartok gems, this dics has (to my mind) the best performance of the Complete Mircaculous Mandarin Ballet out on CD. The orchestra and conduct go for color and refinement rather than sheer power. The opening bristles with excitement, and the chase shows the orchestra in fine form at a tempo that is daringly fast. In this case it works. It is clear that conductor and orchestra are very much home in these works of Bartok. For a complete Mandarin I would say that this is now first choice...even over the excellant Boulez version for DG. The playing in this ballet is some of the best I've heard (only the Berlin Philharmonic in their recording of the suite...not complete ballet...plays better).

Perhaps until the BPO makes a complete recording with Abbado or Rattle...this is the Mandarin to get I would say.

Strong recommendation.

Having just heard this recording in its entirety, I'm not surprised that Ivan Fischer is a sought after guest conductor for some of the world's great orchestras, such as the New York Philharmonic. Here he conducts Bartok with much warmth and compassion. I thought Abbado's version of "Miraculous Mandarin" was superb until I heard Fischer's. Although the Budapest Festival Orchestra's level of playing isn't as refined as either the London Symphony Orchestra's or Berlin Philharmonic's, they perform Bartok's music with tremendous energy and compassion. It's a pleasure hearing rarely performed Bartok in conjunction with the entire score of "Miraculous Mandarin". If you want a first-rate introduction to Bartok's orchestral music, you should definitely acquire this fine CD.

Ivan Fischer is a Bartok expert in the tradition of Sir Georg Solti, Fritz Reiner and Antal Dorati. Like the former conductors, he has insights into the music of his countrymen that give his performances the force of authority. The recording of the Miraculous Mandarin was the initial offering by Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra and has been followed up with other equally significant recordings of Bartok and Kodaly.

With this recording, Fischer has given us some Bartok that is not recorded with much frequency, particularly the Hungarian Peasant Songs and the Dances of Transylvania. These short orchestral works were inspired from Bartok's folk song collecting trips. They are central to Bartok's development as a composer, and we are lucky that so many of these short pieces have been collected here.

The recording of the Miraculous Mandarin is superbly done, bringing out the hard edge of this ballet about a group of thugs who force a woman to lure their victims to them. Bartok found the scenario for this work printed in a magazine. The music has a hard edge to it, a gritty depiction of the events of the ballet. Bartok makes effective use of the orchestra in the hesitation of the girl, at first, to seduce men to be robbed. The mandarin's appearance, his pursuit of the girl and his eerie death are given force by the dissonant themes Bartok juxtaposes.

Ivan Fischer gives the score a great reading that will be almost impossible to beat. Even if you already have a copy of the Miraculous Mandarin you will also want to own this one.

This CD contains a set of short Hungarian songs, but everything else is about the dance. Bartok was not just a collector of folk songs with Kodaly but an expert in dance traditions throughout the Balkans. He extended his curiosity into the Arab world of North Africa, as one can hear in the popular Dance Suite. Here we get 16 lesser-known dance collections from Romania, Transylvania, and Hungary, Mostly quite brief, they build from a fascinating palette of rhythms, each more exotically syncopated than the last. Fischer and his Budapest orchestra perform them with complete ease and native flavor.

Even without the fillers, however, the main work is superbly done. The Miraculous Mandarin ballet has been called Bartok's response to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. But superficial resemblances aside in terms of motor rhythms and dissonant harmonies, the Mandarin is a more shocking, horrific scenario, featuring sexual craving, torture, despair, and a suicide by hanging. Most condcutors set out to maximize the shock value of this often barbaric-sounding music, but Fischer is comparatively less aggressive. He loosens the tension a notch, letting the rhythms become more lilting--even comic in their macabre way--and asking the woodwinds to sing as much as screech. As a result, we don't feel quite so assaulted, and for me that led to more enjoyment. He is aided by exceptionally clear, natural sonics from Philips that convey the music with wonderful impact.

I bought this recording based on hearings of some of Fischer's other recordings, primarily for the Miraculous Mandarin. I was not disappointed, but I was delightfully surprised at how much I enjoyed the other works which I had not heard previously. The recording quality and playing are first-rate, and Fischer's interpretation of the music is superb, easily the equal of Boulez and Dorati. I would recommend this version of the Mandarin as my first choice for someone seeking a recording of it.

It's hard to describe this music without sounding tacky, but one of the descriptives that comes to mind for it is: Acerbic.

Bartok's music may not be an "immediate" as other composers, but there is no denying after one or two familiarizing listens -- his music really flexes powerfully. It's also kinda creepy. After all the orchestral tension, who would have predicted the rising wail of a chorus in the Miraculous Mandarin, brief as it may be? Bartok's music is full of surprises. Probably the most enjoyable on this CD is the Miraculous Mandarin. Obviously that's the meat. And it presents some of the finest orchestral playing I've heard in a long time. All the performers are in their element, and Bartok's music can shine clearly without the marring of bad playing or bad interpretational decisions. The other particularly enjoyable work is the Romanian Folk Dances.

All this music is good, and the performances are at the very top. You can't--and shouldn't--miss out on this.

Ivan Fischer's Bartok recordings with the Budapest Festival Orchestra do, in my view, stand among the great recordings of the 20th century. Even so, this recording of the Miraculous Mandarin is the highlight. I am indeed hard pressed to see how this one can be equaled, let alone surpassed. The electrifying energy is all there and the performance is so vivid and so red-blooded that it almost leaves the listener (this listener, at least) gasping for breath. It is raw, tough, smoldering and it sounds as if the whole work has been conceived of as one big arch from the quiet, but anxious opening in the cellos, to the thunderously savage all-hell-is-loose chase scene. But the rigid focus is not realized at the expense of detail and color - every facet is there, every nuance of swirling colors and shades, every facet of the majesty, fervor, nobility, seductiveness, aggression, tenderness, voluptuousness, playfulness, barbarism and rage contained in this marvelous work. One thing is Fischer's vision of the work, however; another is the fact that the Budapest Festival Orchestral players' individual contributions are small miracles in themselves; piercing, raw strings, woodwind playing that can realize the cackling reediness and deep warmth with perfection, thundering brass and percussion - everything is simply as good as it could possibly be. This, then, is as close as one can hope to come to a perfect performance of anything, and one of the performances (of anything at all) I am truly, utterly grateful that I have had the opportunity to hear.

The same qualities permeate the rest of the disc, from the playfully impish, buoyant and lively Hungarian Peasant songs, the imaginative fairy-tale atmosphere of the Hungarian Sketches, the bouncingly fiery and lyrical (at turns) Romanian Folkdances and the mesmerizing Transylvanian Dances (the Sonatina for piano, orchestrated with skill and imagination). In short, this is a glorious disc, and the sound quality is absolutely excellent. A must, if there ever was one.