The Wooden Prince

Hungarian folk music, orchestral ingenuity and swirling dance

There is big and there is insanely big. Bartók's The Wooden Princerequires a huge orchestra and for that reason alone it is seldom staged. Bartók described his ballet as a ‘symphonic poem to be danced to’. And so it will be: Hungarian choreographer Krisztian Gergye’s dancers accompany Fischer and his orchestra in this performance. Bartók combines late-Romantic orchestral sounds with Hungarian folk music and the narrative power of Béla Balázs’ folktale – seemingly sunny, but with a distinctly mystical side. In the first part, prominent folk musicians play the folk music Bartók drew from. This is the ideal introduction to Bartók’s orchestral ingenuity. And it’s right up the street of the BFO and Krisztian Gergye, who together transform Bartók’s fairy-tale pantomime into a swirling dance performance.