Fiona Maddocks 

Bartók: Four Orchestral Pieces; Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta; Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin – review

Edward Gardner and the Melbourne Symphony are on glittering form in these orchestral works by Bartók, writes Fiona Maddocks
  
  


Australia's oldest orchestra, the Melbourne Symphony, founded in 1906, brings high energy and finesse to these Bartók performances under the incisive baton of Edward Gardner. Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta opens mysteriously with the chromatic Andante tranquillo. The Allegro is demonic, the Adagio luscious and the Allegro full of runaway spirit and urgency. Solo keyboard and percussion work is fresh and vigorous – the celesta, by the way, far less in evidence than the works title suggests (the piano is far more prominent). That suppleness carries through to the Miraculous Mandarin suite, which glitters with strange orchestral colour, and to the Four Orchestral Pieces, less showy but well worth hearing.

 

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