Bartok - Wooden Prince, Scriabin - Poème de l'Extase

Still working on that Wooden Prince. I went to HVC to pick up the Järvi/Philharmonia version on Chandos. Järvi is a musical omnivore who has more than 400 recordings under his belt. Late Romantic, sprawling, colourful scores such as the Wooden Prince are core Järvi territory. Predictably his reading is less refined than the Boulez but he has that swashbuckling approach to the music that keeps one easily involved. Possibly his experience with the Russian repertoire is of assistance here too as the Scriabinesque overtones are becoming ever more obvious the more one listens to this work. Technically the Chandos is hardly better than the Boulez/DGG. A resonant and rather brightly lit recording typical of the early Chandos years.

Yesterday I listened to the whole ballet and today I picked out the fourth and longest dance only. Over 15 minutes long it is a full-fledged symphonic poem in itself. Quite breathtaking too with this no holds barred, feverish yearning that animates the whole orchestra. By the way, focusing on just one of the dances has the advantage that one can forget about the larger context. I find the ballet's nonsensical plot highly distracting when listening to the music. I am not interested at all in princes, princesses and fairies. I just want to listen to music. I have the same experience in Strauss' tone poems where the trivia underpinning his Sinfonia Domestica and Heldenleben keep intruding during auditions.

It's typical for the Wooden Prince in Bartok's output that one keeps looking for influences. That temptation does not exist in Bluebeard and the Mandarin which are so overwhelmingly and idiosyncratically Bartok. In case of the Prince, Stravinsky, Strauss, mature Liszt and early Schoenberg readily come to mind. But listening to that fourth dance suggested a connection with Scriabin. And whilst the latter may have gone a little further in exploring the boundaries of tonality, a back-to-back audition of his Poème de l'Extase (Mehta/LAPO, Decca) easily reveals the consonance of both works' musical substance.