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Live at the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Proms: the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Symphony Orchestra conducted by Joseph Pons in Rachmaninov's 'Paganini' Variations, with Beatrice Rana, and Bartok's knockout Miraculous Mandarin

Presented by Ian Skelly at the Royal Albert Hall, London.

Paul Dukas: La Péri – Poème dansé
Sergey Rachmaninov: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini

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Interval: The writer and music historian Emily MacGregor joins Ian Skelly, live at the Royal Albert Hall, to discuss the controversy surrounding Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin, to examine the social attitudes of Hungary in the early 20th century, and to explore the story of censorship behind the re-versioning of the composer's pantomime ballet for the concert stage.

c.7.00
Béla Bartók: The Miraculous Mandarin

Beatrice Rana (piano)
ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Singers
ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Symphony Orchestra
Josep Pons (conductor)

Desire, brutality and the supernatural are shaken together in the orchestral kaleidoscope of Bartók’s ballet The Miraculous Mandarin. Josep Pons conducts the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Symphony Orchestra in the last of Bartók’s three great music-theatre scores, an electrifying fusion of folk music and modernism. Angular brilliance gives way to exotic, Impressionistic colours in Dukas’s exotic ‘danced poem’ La Péri. ‘Remarkable’ Italian pianist Beatrice Rana is the soloist in Rachmaninov’s thrilling Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.