In the late 1840s, Liszt retired from performing and settled down in Weimar to work as a court conductor. There, his focus as a composer shifted to the symphonic genres he had neglected previously. At the premiere of his Piano Concerto No. 2 in A major in 1857, he took up the conductor's baton, but left the solo part to one of his students. Although the piece sounds like one single movement, it can be divided into several sections. Liszt tied the piece together with a single central concept, an intimate and lyrical theme that he returns to with a different style and tempo in each segment until it culminates in the finale as a brass fanfare.
"In the jungle of a city slum, three tramps force a young girl to seduce men so that they can then rob them,” begins Béla Bartók's description of The Miraculous Mandarin. In Menyhért Lengyel's nightmare tale, the tramps first successfully waylay two poor men, but then are unable to overcome the third victim: a wealthy Chinese mandarin who besieges the girl with his love. They strangle him, stab him with a sword and even hang him, but to no avail. Finally, the girl gives the mandarin what he longs for, and he drops dead. In it, Bartók breaks with classical tonality and uses dissonance as a means of expression. Placing the percussionists in the foreground, he also wrote unorthodox parts for the wind instruments and related the story with a wild, rhythmic, pulsating sound - at least musically. Reinterpreting the visual side of the work will be the dancers of the Éva Duda Dance Company, known for its dynamic and daring choreographies.

Presented by: Müpa Budapest, Budapest Festival Orchestra