Concertgebouw Orchestra and Duda Paiva Company bring The Miraculous Mandarin to life with dancing puppets
Matthias Pintscher to conduct Bartók’s music for pantomime with parts from his shirim cycle and a Netherlands premiere of Nina Šenk
On Friday 14 April, Matthias Pintscher will conduct the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Béla Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin, a work originally composed for a pantomime. This time the original story by Menyhért Lengyel, a parable about lust, power relations and the fear of the strange, is acted out by the life-size dancing dolls of the Duda Paiva Company.
The raw, earthy story of The Miraculous Mandarin contrasts sharply with Matthias Pintscher's own shirim, a four-movement orchestral song cycle set to parts of the biblical Song of Songs. Pintscher will conduct the Concertgebouw Orchestra in two movements: shir II and the final movement, shir IV, commissioned by the orchestra, which which is performed for the first time in the Netherlands. Dutch baritone Thomas Oliemans is the soloist in both movements, joined in the new shir IV by the Netherlands Radio Choir.
The concert will open with another first performance for the Netherlands: the first three movements of Slovenian composer Nina Šenk’s (five-movement) Concerto for Orchestra from 2019, dedicated to Matthias Pintscher.
Residency in Essen
On Saturday, 15 April, the Concertgebouw Orchestra will perform the same programme at the Philharmonie in Essen, Germany, as part of the residency the orchestra has in Essen during the current season.