This album is Marin Alsop's fourth disc with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra for Naxos, following successful releases of works by Bernstein, John Adams, and Philip Glass.
Compositional Technique
The Dance Suite incorporates various folk characteristics, including a North African influence in its opening Moderato dance and a sensuous Molto tranquillo fourth dance of Arabic origin.
Performer Biography
Marin Alsop studied at Yale and the Juilliard School, and won the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize at Tanglewood, where she studied with Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa.
Performer Biography
Marin Alsop, the conductor, became the first woman to hold the title of Principal Conductor for any British symphony orchestra when she took the role with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in 2002.
Composition History
The Dance Suite by Bartók was one of three commissions to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the union of Buda and Pest as the Hungarian capital.
Composer Biography
Béla Bartók, the composer, experienced few great successes during his lifetime, with the premiere of his ballet The Wooden Prince in 1917 being one of them.
Critical Reception
Bartók's pantomime The Miraculous Mandarin was banned immediately after its 1926 premiere in Cologne by Mayor Konrad Adenauer on moral grounds and was not staged again during Bartók's lifetime.
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