‘The Miraculous Mandarin’ (op. 19, Sz 73) is Bartok’s last work for the stage. The plot revolves around prostitution, brutality, robbery, murder, being an outsider, (unrequited) love and finally, as a catharsis, a kind of love-death. The music is relentlessly sharp for long stretches, garishly dissonant, radical, probably the most modern score Bartok created. The premiere (1926) in Cologne was a scandal and Konrad Adenauer, then Lord Mayor of Cologne, immediately cancelled the performances. The Violin Concerto No. 2 Sz 112 was composed between August 1937 and 31 December 1938, shortly before Bartok’s emigration to the United States in view of the increasingly oppressive political and social climate in Hungary. Unlike the ‘Mandarin’, the work quickly established itself after its premiere in Amsterdam in 1939 as one of the central violin concertos of the first half of the 20th century and at the same time as one of Bartok’s greatest creations.