This poorly listed item is the harmonia mundi release, recorded in 1989 and first released with a purple background cover in 1991. What brilliance it contains! The Miraculous Mandarin is rarely played in this form for piano duet, but it sounds fantastically vivid. The story is maximally unpleasant, but somehow in ballet this seems to matter less than in opera, the stylisation actually allows for a wider range of expression that doesn't alienate the audience. To hear it on the piano makes it seem further still from the action, although you do feel a narrative drive. The notes give the plot in Bartok's own succinct summary. Much of the music is savage - as untrammelled as anything Bartok wrote - but it is superbly exciting. The Kammersinfonie Op. 9 by Schoenberg transposes the fierceness to the sense of musical development, based on a series of rising fourths and being in a constant state of flux and transformation. It falls somewhere between Strauss and Bartok - a profusion of notes, wonderfully sprung between intellectual thought and Romantic emotion. Zoltan Kocsis and Adrienne Hauser make a totally inspired duo, and the recording is admirably clear and immediate. The cover painting by Alexei von Jawlensky prepares one for the expressionistic onslaught of the Bartok and the hallucinogenic emotions of both works.
Béla Bartók [1881-1945]
The Miraculous Mandarin (Version for Piano Duet)
Arnold Schoenberg [1974-1951]
Kammersymphonie No. 1 Op. 9 (Version for Piano Duet)
Zoltán Kocsis, Piano
Adrienne Hauser, Piano
Harmonia Mundi 1903021
