Franz Welser-Möst conducts Bartók's Miraculous Mandarin, Mahler, and Krenek

The Cleveland Orchestra, "America's finest" (The New York Times), join their esteemed longtime music director Franz Welser-Möst for a provocative and poignant program centered around the suite from Béla Bartók's Miraculous Mandarin—a pantomime ballet about the dark passions between men and women that caused such a scandal at its 1926 Cologne premiere that it was banned on moral grounds! The music remains as striking and unique as ever, which can also be said for the other works on the program: the eclectic and rarely heard Kleine Symphonie by Austrian-born composer Ernst Krenek; the intense opening Adagio from Gustav Mahler's uncompleted Tenth Symphony; and another favorite by Bartók, the bold and complex String Quartet No. 3 in an orchestral arrangement.

Photo © Roger Mastroianni