Page 154 - GTMF 2024 Season Program

August 9 & 10 PROGRAM NOTES

Béla Bartók

Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin

AT A GLANCE

Born: 1881
Died: 1945
Date of Composition: 1926
Instrumentation: Suite from
The Miraculous Mandarin is
scored for 3 flutes (2 and
nd
3 doubling piccolo), 3 oboes
rd
(3 doubling English horn),
rd
3 clarinets (3 doubling bass
rd
clarinet), 3 bassoons (3 doubling
rd
contrabassoon), 4 horns,
3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba,
timpani, percussion, harp, piano,
celesta, organ and strings.

In the early 20 century ballet
th
conjured up images of nutcrackers
and swans and sleeping beauties,
a place where everything was
beautiful and true love always
won out in the end. For many
folks that’s still the connotation.
Then along came The Miraculous
Mandarin, a gruesome creep
show involving thugs and
prostitutes and a torture-and-
murder scene straight out of a
midnight slasher movie. After its
1926 premiere in Cologne it was
banned for its moral turpitude. Béla Bartók — Wikipedia
(Imagine that ever happening
to Swan Lake.) These days it is
usually encountered as a sizzling apartment. After two unsuccessful with his longing fulfilled,
orchestral suite that encompasses attempts, a mysteriously poised he expires.
about two-thirds of Bartók’s wealthy Chinese man appears; he
original score. lusts for the woman, the thugs The suite tells the story up to
the chase scene in which the
The frenzied opening music attack him, he resists and they wealthy man pursues the young
invokes an angst-filled modern proceed to torment him in a woman, fortunately omitting the
city in which a trio of thugs use number of ways best not described. music from the more—ahem—
a young woman to entice But he won’t die. Eventually the lurid post-chase episodes.
potential robbery victims into their young woman embraces him, and

152 Grand Teton Music Festival Season 63