R ecordings of The Miraculous Mandarin used to outnumber The Wooden Prince 10 to one, so it’s good to see Bartók’s earlier ballet getting equal billing here. Unlike the Mandarin with its grimy, urban, modernist vibe, the Prince is rooted in pungent Hungarian folk music, viewed, of course, through the composer’s unique 20th-century lens.
It’s the story of a princess who falls in love with a decoy prince rather than the real thing and Edward Gardner revels in the vivid colours of its nature-inflected score. The London Philharmonic Orchestra is taut and dramatically alert throughout. There’s an unnerving sense of foreboding underpinning the Dance of the Trees; the Dance of the Waves churns with kinetic energy and the foot-stamping Dance of the Princess with the Wooden Doll cuts a rustic dash.
The live recording is less clinical than Boulez’s crystalline 1991 studio performance (still essential listening), but Gardner’s astute pacing is more theatrically involving than recent accounts by Cristian Măcelaru or Susanna Mälkki.
As for The Miraculous Mandarin Suite, this is as fine a performance as any, sleek and sinister in its evocation of the honeytrap antics of the sex worker and her thuggish pimps, swaggering or shy in her encounters with the old rake and the young man, and prickling with jagged pentatonic scales once the mandarin arrives on the scene. To open, Gardner paints a brutal portrait of the dystopian city with its honking car horns and concludes with a raw-nerved depiction of the desperate final chase.
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