The pantomime ballet The Miraculous Mandarin was the third and last of Bartók’s major compositions for the stage after his one-act opera Bluebeard’s Castle and the ballet The Wooden Prince.
The Miraculous Mandarin proved that not only was he a master of the efficient use of the orchestra, but also that he had absorbed the folkloric elements of his native Hungary as well as the latest avantgarde trends from Paris and Vienna. His powerful musical intellect fused these elements into a personal and extremely expressive style.

The pantomime is based on a play by the Hungarian author Melchior Lengyel, whose writing tends to be described in terms of sex, lust, psychosis, violence and horror. The play is the story of how a mysterious Chinese man is lured into a garret in a Western city by a girl who has been forced to prostitute herself.
The narrative moves between natural sexual desire, civilized courting and perceived perversion. This is something that Bartók is able to convey in his rich, chromatic and wildly colourful music.
The work caused a scandal at the premiere in 1926, and for a long time it was usually the short version, which Bartók had begun before he completed the ballet, that was performed.

It is a frightening and violent story set in a brothel. The curtain rises, and three villains enter with a girl. The three men are introduced by a jerky, chromatic figure in the strings. They find no money in her home, so they tell her to stand by the window and attract customers. A solo clarinet plays as she approaches the window.

She lures three men to her room, the first is an older man whose comical courtship is illustrated by trombone glissandi.
The second is a shy, good-looking man, represented by an oboe and English horn. Neither of them has any money, so they are quickly thrown out by the villains.
The clarinet grows wilder when the girl returns to the window the third time. Now she attracts a Chinese mandarin, who is introduced by a quasi-oriental theme in the trombones. His face reveals no feeling, apart from the fire in his eyes as he keeps staring at the girl. Although she fears him, her dance becomes increasingly sensual. When he tries to take her in his arms she runs away. A fugue section in the strings, woodwind and brass becomes frenetic when he gives chase. In the end the gangsters attack the mandarin and rob him. The ballet ends with him being killed, but this sequence has been removed from the concert version.

Text: Andreas Konvicka

Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a wayfarer) was Mahler’s first song cycle, written when he was Assistant Kapellmeister at Kassel Opera House in 1884-1885. The moods and the choice of subject are characterised by his unhappy and unrequited love affair with the soprano Johanna Richter during that period. The poems, which he wrote himself in winter 1884 and set to music the following year, express strong feelings dominated by despair and grief. His hopes for good fortune are also glimpsed, but come to naught. Mahler used his entire expressive palette, and the work is highly personal, despite being inspired by Schubert’s song cycles Die schöne Müllerin (The pretty miller girl) and Winterreise (Winter journey), which are also about unhappy love stories. Mahler reused themes from Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen for his contemporaneously composed first symphony, in the same way as Schubert used material from his Lieder in his chamber‑music works.

The first song – Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht (When my darling has her wedding day) – is sad and tragic, but at the same time somewhat ironic. The young man has been rejected by his lover, and the anguish of the vocal part contrasts with the orchestra’s intimations of the happy wedding celebration in the background.
In the pastoral Ging heut’ morgen übers Feld (I walked across the fields this morning) the singer is greeted by the verdant beauties of nature. The birds are singing, the sun is shining and the flowers are flourishing, but the young man is wondering whether he will ever be able to thrive again.
The dramatic third song – Ich hab’ ein glühend Messer (I have a shiny knife) – is probably the most gruesome song Mahler wrote, and it is a sharp contrast, to say the least, when it is thrown straight in our face. Everywhere the young man is reminded of his beloved – a feeling like a glowing dagger in his chest. Desperate and reckless, he feels a raging despair and a desire to end his pain.
The final song – Die zwei blauen Augen (The two blue eyes) – is a redemptive epilogue in which the young man feels compelled to leave home. He bids his loved one farewell, sets off into the dark night and experiences a feeling of great solitude. When he falls fast asleep under a lime tree, whose flowers come floating down over him, his grief is transformed. Everything is fine again – things are all in order once more!

Text: Andreas Konvicka

Berlioz was almost twenty-seven years old when his first major work, Symphonie fantastique, was first performed in Paris in 1830. He was inspired by the mass scenes of early 19^th century opera and drama, but above all he was fascinated by the Irish actress Harriet Smithson, whom he had seen as Ophelia in Hamlet. He fell passionately in love and began to court her, unsuccessfully to begin with. That is the biographical background to the work, which has the subtitle Épisode de la vie d’un artiste.

The symphony is unusual in that it has five, instead of four, movements, and thematically Berlioz refers to Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony (also in five movements and in the middle a pastoral scene with thunder). The principal theme from the first movement, which focuses on the two lovers, returns throughout the symphony. Berlioz called it an idée fixe, it can be seen as a precursor to Wagner’s leitmotiv.

The symphony portrays a musician who has taken opium in his despair over an unhappy love affair, and he falls into a feverish sleep full of nightmares.
In the first movement he remembers how empty his life was before he met his beloved. When she appears in his dream, the music becomes intense and passionate.
In the second movement he is at a great ball. Here the music is exquisitely orchestrated with only high woodwinds, horns, strings and two harps. A few times the waltz theme unexpectedly changes key when he glimpses his beloved in the crowd.
The middle movement is a pastoral scene. The peace and beauty of the countryside with shepherd’s pipes, bird song and nostalgic lethargy is only interrupted by the thought of his beloved. Then thunder can be heard in the distance – a metaphor that symbolizes the spiritual torment of humans.
It all turns into a nightmare when he dreams that he kills his beloved in a jealous rage and is condemned to death. A sombre march accompanies him to the scaffold to the sound of loud brass, cornets and low trombones. The beloved’s theme is repeated as the blade of the guillotine falls.
This is followed by a witches’ sabbath with horrible sounds, clattering bones (when the strings play with the stick side of the bow), piercing howls and loud laughter as ghouls and witches are gathering for his funeral. The beloved is present too, and her theme is played obscenely by the soprano clarinet. Resounding bells introduce the Catholic doomsday sequence, the dies irae (day of wrath), and all comes to turbulent end.

Text: Andreas Konvicka