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The Wooden Prince (Hungarian : A fából faragott királyfi), Op. 13, Sz. 60, is a one-act pantomime ballet composed by Béla Bartók in 1914–1916 (orchestrated 1916–1917) to a scenario by Béla Balázs. It was first performed at the Budapest Opera on 12 May 1917 under the conductor Egisto Tango.
The Wooden Prince has never achieved the fame of Bartók's other ballet, The Miraculous Mandarin (1926) but it was enough of a success at its premiere to prompt the Opera House to stage Bartók's opera, Bluebeard's Castle (which had not been performed since 1911) in the following year. Like Bluebeard, The Wooden Prince uses a huge orchestra (it even includes saxophones), though the critic Paul Griffiths believes it sounds like an earlier work in style (Griffiths p. 71). The music shows the influence of Debussy and Richard Strauss, as well as Wagner (the introduction echoes the prelude of Das Rheingold ). Bartók used a scenario by the poet Béla Balázs, which had appeared in the influential literary journal Nyugat in 1912.
This work contains the largest orchestration which Bartók ever scored for:
A prince falls in love with a princess, but is stopped from reaching her by a fairy who makes a forest and a stream rise against him. To attract the princess' attention, the prince hangs his cloak on a staff and fixes a crown and locks of his hair to it. The princess catches sight of this "wooden prince" and comes to dance with it. The fairy brings the wooden prince to life and the princess goes away with that instead of the real prince, who falls into despair. The fairy takes pity on him as he sleeps, dresses him in finery and reduces the wooden prince to lifelessness again. The princess returns and is finally united with the human prince.
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Pli selon pli is a piece of classical music by the French composer Pierre Boulez. It carries the subtitle Portrait de Mallarmé. It is scored for a solo soprano and orchestra and uses the texts of three sonnets of French symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé and single lines from two of his other poems. At over an hour, it is Boulez's longest work.
Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Sz. 106, BB 114 is one of the best-known compositions by the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. Commissioned by Paul Sacher to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the chamber orchestra Basler Kammerorchester, the score is dated 7 September 1936.
Duke Bluebeard's Castle is a one-act Symbolist opera by composer Béla Bartók to a Hungarian libretto by his friend and poet Béla Balázs. Based on the French folk legend, or conte populaire, as told by Charles Perrault, it lasts about an hour and deploys just two singing characters: Bluebeard and his newest wife Judith ; the two have just eloped and she is coming home to his castle for the first time.
A pit orchestra is a type of orchestra that accompanies performers in musicals, operas, ballets, and other shows involving music. The term was also used for orchestras accompanying silent movies when more than a piano was used. In performances of operas and ballets, the pit orchestra is typically similar in size to a symphony orchestra, though it may contain smaller string and brass sections, depending upon the piece. Such orchestras may vary in size from approximately 30 musicians to as many as 90–100 musicians. However, because of financial, spatial, and volume concerns, current musical theatre pit orchestras are considerably smaller.
The Viola Concerto, Sz. 120, BB 128 was one of the last pieces Béla Bartók wrote. He began composing it while living in Saranac Lake, New York, in July 1945. It was commissioned by William Primrose, a respected violist who knew that Bartók could provide a challenging piece for him to perform. He said that Bartók should not "feel in any way proscribed by the apparent technical limitations of the instrument". Bartók was suffering the terminal stages of leukemia when he began writing the piece and left only sketches at the time of his death.
Béla Bartók's Violin Concerto No. 2, Sz. 112, BB 117 was written in 1937–38. During the composer's life, it was known simply as his Violin Concerto. His other violin concerto, Violin Concerto No. 1, Sz. 36, BB 48a, was written in the years 1907–1908, but only published in 1956, after the composer's death, as "Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. posth."
The Miraculous Mandarin Op. 19, Sz. 73, is a one act pantomime ballet composed by Béla Bartók between 1918 and 1924, and based on the 1916 story by Melchior Lengyel. Premiered on 27 November 1926 conducted by Eugen Szenkar at the Cologne Opera, Germany, it caused a scandal and was subsequently banned on moral grounds. Although more successful at its Prague premiere, it was generally performed during the rest of Bartók's life in the form of a concert suite, which preserves about two-thirds of the original pantomime's music.
The Bassarids is an opera in one act and an intermezzo, with music by Hans Werner Henze to an English libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, after Euripides's The Bacchae.
The Piano Concerto No. 2 in G major, Sz. 95, BB 101 of Béla Bartók is a musical composition for piano and orchestra. The work, which was composed between 1930 and 1931, is notorious for being one of the most difficult pieces in the repertoire. Playing time is 26–29 minutes.
Requiem is an instrumental musical composition by Hans Werner Henze, premiered in Cologne on 24 February 1993. It consists of nine sacred concertos for piano solo, trumpet and large chamber orchestra. About this piece, the composer has the following comments.
These nine instrumental pieces are concerned with the human fears and problems of our time, with illness and death, love and loneliness, and in particular with the character of Michael Vyner, an extremely lively and passionate man, his life and his death, and my grief at his loss which stands for the loss of so many others who have also tragically departed from our world. The spirit of this music can be explained by such facts and by our time, by which it seems to me to be strongly influenced, by its horrors and passions, its beauty and dynamics. The movements of the Requiem can be played separately or in any desired combination. Hans Werner Henze
The Piano Concerto No. 1, Sz. 83, BB 91 of Béla Bartók was composed in 1926. Average playing time is between 23 and 24 minutes.
Kossuth, Sz. 21, BB. 31, DD. 75a is a symphonic poem composed by Béla Bartók inspired by the Hungarian politician Lajos Kossuth.
Polish composer Witold Lutosławski wrote his Symphony No. 4 in 1988–92, completing it on 22 August 1992.
The Third Symphony by Alfred Schnittke was his fourth composition in the symphonic form, completed in 1981.
Naive and Sentimental Music is a symphonic work by American composer John Adams. The title of the work alludes to an essay by Friedrich Schiller, On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry, that contrasts a creative personality that creates art for its own sake versus one conscious of other purposes, such as art’s place in history. The composer cites both the slowly developing harmonies of Bruckner's Fourth Symphony and the atmosphere of the Sonoma coastline as inspirations for the work. The piece was co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Ensemble Modern, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. It received its first public performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen on February 19, 1999. A recording by Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic was subsequently released by Nonesuch Records.
Symphony No. 4, "A Vitória" is a composition by the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, written in 1919. A recording conducted by the composer lasts just over thirty minutes.
The Symphony No. 5, Washington Mosaics, Op. 57, is an orchestral composition by the Finnish composer Aulis Sallinen, who wrote the piece from 1984–85, revising the finale in 1987. The National Symphony Orchestra, the commissioning institution, premiered the work in 10 October 1985 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., under the direction of its music director, Mstislav Rostropovich.
The Symphony No. 4, Op. 49, is an orchestral composition by the Finnish composer Aulis Sallinen, who wrote the piece from 1978–79 for a commission from the City of Turku, to celebrate its 750th anniversary. The Turku Philharmonic Orchestra premiered the work on 9 August 1979, under the direction of its principal conductor, Pertti Pekkanen.
Jörg Widmann's Horn Concerto was composed in 2023–24 and premiered on 30 May 2024 with soloist Stefan Dohr and the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Simon Rattle at Berliner Philharmonie. The work has enigmatic as well as humorous elements.
