Bartók: Bluebeard's Castle

Both Kares and Vörös offer a subtle, understated approach…As well as conveying the piece’s taut structure and the orchestral writing’s sheer sweep, conductor Susanna Mälkki seeks out the detail... — BBC Music Magazine, June 2021, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 2nd Apr 2021
Catalogue No: BIS2388
Label: BIS
Length: 60 minutes

Gramophone Magazine

June 2021

Editor's Choice
International Classical Music Awards

2022

Nominated - Opera
Grammy Awards

64th Awards (2022)

Nominee - Best Opera Recording

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Bartók: Duke Bluebeard's Castle, Sz. 48, Op. 11

Work length1:00:26

$14.00

$16.80

$24.50

Szilvia Vörös (mezzo-soprano), Mika Kares (bass)
Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra
Susanna Mälkki

Haj regő rejtem (Live)

Track length2:02

$1.00

$1.20

$1.75

Megérkeztünk (Live)

Track length13:41

$3.00

$3.60

$5.25

Jaj! - Mit látsz? Mit látsz? (Live)

Track length4:17

$1.00

$1.20

$1.75

Mit látsz? - Száz kegyetlen szörnyű fegyver... (Live)

Track length4:13

$1.00

$1.20

$1.75

Oh, be sok kincs! (Live)

Track length2:23

$1.00

$1.20

$1.75

Oh! Virágok! Oh! Illatos kert! (Live)

Track length4:45

$1.00

$1.20

$1.75

Ah! Lásd ez az én birodalmam... (Live)

Track length6:32

$1.00

$1.20

$1.75

Csendes fehér tavat látok (Live)

Track length12:43

$3.00

$3.60

$5.25

Lásd a régi aszszonyokat (Live)

Track length9:50

$2.00

$2.40

$3.50

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Composed in 1911, Bluebeard's Castle is Béla Bartók's only opera – a radical masterpiece which has secured a place alongside the other innovative music dramas of the same period, from Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande to Berg's Wozzeck. Planning to write a one-act opera, Bartók settled on a libretto by Béla Balázs with the kind of surreal and/or macabre themes that would soon feature in his two ballets, The Wooden Prince and The Miraculous Mandarin. The main source for the libretto text was a play by Maeterlinck, a retelling of Perrault's gruesome tale of Barbe-Bleue, the sinister yet strangely seductive wife-killer. Balázs turned the drama into what he called a 'mystery play', however, and his stylisation of the story throws the weight of the drama onto stage-setting and music. Susanna Mälkki and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra have already proved their Bartók credentials with a disc of his ballet scores which was chosen as Record of the Week in BBC Radio 3 Record Review and earned top marks in Diapason and on the website Klassik-Heute. Joined by Mika Kares as Duke Bluebeard and his Judit, the Hungarian mezzo-soprano Szilvia Vörös, the team here performs Bartók's darkly glittering, shimmering and threatening score in a live recording from 2020.

Reviews

June 2021

Both Kares and Vörös offer a subtle, understated approach…As well as conveying the piece’s taut structure and the orchestral writing’s sheer sweep, conductor Susanna Mälkki seeks out the detail of Bartók’s tone-painting, exploring, in her assured, potent account, the work’s sense of psychological darkness and secrecy.

June 2021

[Mälkki] seems to know instinctively when to unobtrusively tighten the emotional screw and when to step back and simply let us take in Bartók’s flabbergasting orchestral canvas.

July 2021

Mälkki’s reading of the score with the Helsinki Philharmonic is a thrilling addition to the work’s already big discography...Mälkki certainly presents a more melancholy view of the score than is sometimes heard, very much in keeping with the spirit of what the librettist Béla Balázs called a ‘mystery play of the mind’. Her pacing is generous at the opening, yet she steadily tightens the dramatic tension.

2nd May 2021

This atmospheric and brilliantly played account certainly challenges the finest, with a commanding, younger-than-usual protagonist in Kares — brooding, dark-voiced and sympathetic — and Vörös’s lightish mezzo easily nailing the famous high C at the Castle’s Fifth Door.

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