MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW
Plain text for smartphones & printers


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

Support us financially by purchasing this disc from
Béla BARTÓK (1881-1945)
The Wonderful Mandarin - suite for orchestra (1926) [18.29]
Richard STRAUSS (1864-1945)
Also sprach Zarathustra - tone poem for large orchestra (1896) [31.47]
Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR/Rudolf Kempe
rec. Konzertmitschnitt Stuttgart Liederhalle, 12 January 1961
HÄNSSLER CLASSIC CD 94.220 [50.27]

Bartók’s Dance-Pantomime, The Wonderful Mandarin is full of uncompromising and aggressively decadent music and very modern in idiom. Its storyline is sordid and squalid in the extreme. Three pimps in a foul backstreet room force a girl to lure men in to be beaten up and robbed. A new victim appears. It is a Chinese Mandarin. The girl dances seductively. The pimps rob him and then try to kill him in so many ways but to no avail. It is only when the girl has given herself to him that the Mandarin dies of his injuries.
 
Kempe’s keenly observed, energetic, detailed reading reveals the pitiless nature and the brutal, ruthless unfeeling violence of the pimps through unrelenting jagged dissonances and sour jazz figures; plus the self-loathing of the girl forced to dance so provocatively to a heavy menacing ostinato before she is moved to show pity and love to the hapless Mandarin.
 
The glorious ‘sunrise’ opening of Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra will always be associated with the beginning of Kubrick’s film 2001 - A Space Odyssey. Kempe’s opening is magnificent indeed. Strauss was not interested in attempting to put Nietzsche’s philosophy into music but rather using it as the basis for a musical expression of his own sentiments. Kempe’s masterly reading of this opulent music is very much in the Late-Romantic tradition, full of drama, expression and atmosphere. Just listen to the sections marked ‘Of the great Longing’ and ‘Of Joys and Passions’ for instance to appreciate the unrestrained passion and excitement but at the same time the remarkable clarity and transparency of his readings. The enigmatic, unresolved closing pages of this work are given such probing luminosity here.
 
These recordings have been digitally re-mastered from the original SWR tapes.
 
A quite frightening Mandarin and a Zarathustra to treasure. Testimony to the prodigious flair of this great conductor.
 
Ian Lace
 
A quite frightening Mandarin and a Zarathustra to treasure. 

Masterwork Index: Also Sprach Zarathustra