The Miraculous Mandarin

Les Dissonances return to a composer with whose music they have proven a deep and immediate affinity. Composed in 1919, the ballet The Miraculous Mandarinwas premiered only in 1926 in Cologne, and created a scandal that long has kept the work from the stage. It is in the form of this suite for orchestra, dated 1928, that this savage and urbane score— the brouhaha of “noises from the great city” serve as introduction to an anthology — would achieve its rightful place in posterity. It is to the violinist and friend of Bartók, Zoltan Szekely, that we owe the composer’s only violin concerto to be published in his lifetime. The principle of the variation subverts the classical form displayed in the three movements, drawing an arc-shaped architecture so dear to the composer. Often expressionist, open to a whole diverse universe of sounds, with a violence at times cataclysmic, it is often compared to Alban Berg’s Concerto, of which it is contemporary.