Simply after the Toronto Symphony Orchestra returns from their upcoming European tour, the orchestra will launch their newest album, The Miraculous Mandarin. The album would be the Orchestra’s third launch on the Harmonia Mundi label, accessible worldwide on February 13, 2026.
Because the title suggests, the album will highlight the music of Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, and was recorded stay at Roy Thomson Corridor from November 21 to 23, 2024. The monitor listing consists of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra together with the entire rating for The Miraculous Mandarin, that includes the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir.
Together with the Bartók works, the album featured a TSO fee by Canadian Emilie LeBel titled the sediments. LeBel is the Orchestra’s Composer Advisor.
“I used to be excited to pick Bartók for our third collaboration with Harmonia Mundi as a result of, like our first two recordings — of Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie and Stravinsky’ Pulcinella — his Miraculous Mandarin epitomizes Twentieth-century classical music, which has turn out to be a specialty of the TSO,” mentioned Toronto Symphony Orchestra Music Director Gustavo Gimeno in a press release.
“In getting ready for and recording this album, I discovered it extraordinary to witness the unbelievable motivation and focus demonstrated by the musicians. Their focus combined with adrenaline generated a palpable power — one I definitely felt from the rostrum, our viewers felt within the live performance corridor, and I hope listeners will really feel as effectively.”
The Music
The TSO’s 2024/25 season included seven concerti for orchestra, a part of the orchestra’s acknowledged general theme of “unified plurality”. Of the seven, Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra might be probably the most well-known piece written in that type. Composed in 1943 in a Classical five-movement construction, the Concerto is virtuosic in nature, and incorporates the composer’s penchant for including the affect of folks music and enigmatic harmonies. It’s a well-liked piece that’s routinely programmed throughout the globe.
The Miraculous Mandarin Op. 19, Sz. 73 (BB 82) is a lesser identified work by the Hungarian composer. Bartók initially composed the work in a brief type between 1918 and 1919 throughout the tough interval following the tip of WWI. The Austro-Hungarian empire had been defeated, and circumstances in his village have been exhausting, with little gas or meals. The composer set the rating apart for a number of years till orchestrating it in 1924, when he might organize for its premiere in Köln (Cologne), Germany.
It’s primarily based on a narrative revealed in 1916 by Jewish Hungarian author Melchior Lengyel. Lengyel himself dubbed the work “a pantomime grotesque”, and Bartók was impressed to create his one-act pantomime ballet round it.
The work sparked a scandal on its premiere in 1926 in Germany on ethical grounds, though it was higher acquired afterward in Prague. Through the composer’s lifetime, it was most frequently carried out as an orchestral suite, and never a ballet manufacturing, and didn’t see a Budapest premiere till 1945, after his dying.
The controversy comes from the story, infused with sexuality and violence. Three tramps are in an residence, forcing a younger lady to attempt to lure passersby to allow them to rob them. The primary two victims of their rip-off, an previous man and a a lot youthful man, don’t have any cash, so the tramps throw them again out into the road.
The third mark of their scheme, nevertheless, is the Mandarin. He frightens the woman, however the tramps power her to bounce for him too. The Mandarin is overcome with a violent ardour, and chases the hapless woman. He catches her, however the tramps rob him and drag him to a mattress, the place they consider they’ve suffocated him with a pillow. The Mandarin, nevertheless, doesn’t die, and stares on the woman with an uncontrollable need. The tramps then attempt to kill him with a rusty previous sword, however the Mandarin rises once more, throwing himself on the woman.
The three tramps overpower him, tie him up, after which hold him from the sunshine of their shabby residence. The Mandarin glows in a disturbing green-blue mild. The woman asks the tramps to free him, and after they do, she lets him embrace her. Glad, he dies.
Hungarian Eugen Szenkár carried out the Köln premiere, and he wrote concerning the efficiency in his memoirs.
“On the finish of the efficiency there was a live performance of whistling and catcalls! Bartók was current, sitting within the auditorium as he had in any respect the rehearsals. The uproar was so deafening and prolonged that the fireplace curtain needed to be introduced down. Nonetheless, we endured it and weren’t afraid to look in entrance of the curtain, at which level the whistles resumed with a vengeance. It might have been that there have been remoted ‘Bravos’, however all the things was misplaced beneath the tumult! After which the following day got here the critiques. What was there, particularly within the Volkszeitung (Individuals’s Newspaper), the paper of the Catholic Centre Social gathering, can hardly be repeated…”
Regardless of the fervour and depth of the music, the total rating continues to be hardly ever introduced. The model recorded by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra restores the ultimate third of the rating, which features a quick choral half.
Gimeno chosen Emilie LeBel’s 2021 piece the sediments, impressed by the writings of marine biologist and conservationist Rachel Carson, to accompany Bartók’s works. Gradual and meditative in nature, whereas echoing the textures of Bartók’s work, it represents a tonal distinction. The piece was commissioned by the TSO whereas LeBel served as RBC Affiliate Composer (2018–2022). She was named because the TSO Composer Advisor in 2023.
The TSO Catalogue
The album provides to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s legacy of greater than 150 recordings for the reason that first launch again in 1952. The group’s first recording with Harmonia Mundi, Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie, acquired the 2025 JUNO Award for Classical Album of the 12 months (Massive Ensemble). It’s simply the newest of many awards and accolades, which embody a JUNO Award and GRAMMY nomination for TSO’s 2019 recording of works by Vaughan Williams, below TSO Conductor Emeritus Peter Oundjian, and one other JUNO again in 2019 for his or her 2021 recording of Massenet’s Thaïs, below late TSO Conductor Laureate Sir Andrew Davis, amongst others.
The following launch on the Harmonia Mundi label shall be Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, which was recorded stay in November 2025, and shall be launched in 2027.
- Yow will discover the TSO’s recordings, together with The Miraculous Mandarin as of on February 13, [HERE].
- You possibly can preorder The Miraculous Mandarin [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is the Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. Beforehand, she was a contract author with a specialty in tradition and journey for 3 a long time, and a artistic writing teacher for Ontariolearn.
