On March 25, Naxos releases Bela Bartok’s fairytale ballet The Wooden Prince (Naxos 8570534), featuring Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Marin Alsop and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.
In the years leading up to World War I, Bartok occupied himself with a series of works for
the theater. He completed his first stage work Bluebeard’s Castle in 1911. The Wooden Prince (1914-16) is a fairytale ballet with an original story by Bartók’s literary acquaintance Bela Balazs, who wrote the libretto for Bluebeard’s Castle (Naxos 8660928).
Set “once upon a time” in a forest whose trees rustle to life, the ballet runs continuously as a series of seven dances with connecting music and recurring musical themes. Though outwardly lighthearted in its subject matter, The Wooden Prince contains a mystical element that may explain Bartók’s attraction to the story. He crafted the work as a symmetrical, tripartite symphonic poem, with the final section recalling materials from the first part in reverse order.
Marin Alsop began her tenure as Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony in September. She is the first conductor ever to receive the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship and was the first musician to win both Gramophone’s “Artist of the Year” award and the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Conductor’s Award in the same season.
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