The Wooden Prince

concert version edited by Jukka-Pekka Saraste

Bartók’s two ballets, The Wooden Prince and The Miraculous Mandarin, are both about the power of sexual attraction – whch is no less real in the fairy-tale context of the first than in the modern city setting of the other. The desires of both the Prince and the Mandarin are fixed, irrevocably, on one object and no amount of violence will deter either of them from pursuing it. The obstacles put in the way of the Prince are more symbolic than the brutality suffered by the Mandarin but, until the Fairy who controls events takes pity on him, they are actually more effective.

Since Jukka-Pekka Saraste’s concert version of the ballet score cuts more than a quarter of the original, it would be inappropriate to go into every detail of the plot: some events are simply not represented here. The first 13 or 14 minutes, however, are much the same in the two versions, beginning (Molto moderato) with Bartók’s evocation of the pastoral landscape, largely by means of sustained C major harmonies clearly inspired by the prolonged E flat at the beginning of Das Rheingold. The curtain rises, with swirling woodwind and tremolando strings, to reveal two little castles, the Prince’s on one side and the Princess’s on the other, each on top of its hillock

The first to appear is the Princess, who dances (Molto moderato) to a clarinet melody that will continue to be associated with her. As soon as the Prince appears, however, the Fairy orders her, in spite of her resistance (Piú allegro), to go back inside. The Prince, who has not yet caught sight of her, marches hesitantly (Andante) to a variant of his leitmotif on harp and lower strings, the definitive version being presented on clainet when he sees her spinning in her castle and, with an explosion of strings and woodwind, is immediately smitten. He then sets out towards her castle, only to be prevented by the Fairy, who puts a spell on the forest to bar his way. A hard-fought battle ensues (Assai moderato) and the Prince finally breaks through.

The next event in this version, performed at first to a march tune on the four horns (Meno allegro), is the birth of the wooden prince – a puppet the Prince fashions from his staff, his cloak and his crown to attract the attention of the Princess, who is evidently not interested in the real thing. But she is not impressed by the puppet either and it is only when he cuts off his hair and adds that to the artifice that she comes forward to play wiith it – to the accompaniment of a busy solo clarinet and other woodwind (Allegretto). The real Prince, however, now that he has cut off his golden hair, she finds repugant. To his dismay, she dances away with the puppet to a grotesquely vigorous version of the Prince’s own leitmotif (Allegro). The central dance of the score, it is both prolonged and dramatic, driving the Prince to an extreme of despair reflected in expressive scoring for strings and brass (Poco sostenuto).

But now at last, as signalled by a sympathetic solo cello and cor anglais, the Fairy takes pity on him (Adagio) and commands the wood to dance in tribute to him. In the meantime the Princess has been having a hard time with the wooden prince, which is falling apart and is a sorry spectacle in comparison withthe real Prince whose hair and crown have now been restored to him by the Fairy. Ironically, however, the forest comes to life again and bars her way to him, the ensuing struggle acting as a recapitulation of the Prince’s earlier struggle with the same force of nature. It is only when she throws away her crown and cuts off her hair that the Prince comes forward to embrace her in the most passionate moment (Adagio) of the ballet and, as the curtain falls, the C major nature music from the beginning is recalled.

Bartók’s first major success, which was an encouraging endorsement of his recently developed mature idiom, The Wooden Prince was first performed, after no fewer than 30 rehearsals, at the Budapest Opera House in May 1918.

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