With its bizarre story of moral corruption and violence, Béla Bartók’s final stage work, The Miraculous Mandarin, was banned after the first performance in 1926. Richly scored, it has a breathtakingly rapid pace, its nightmarish scenes depicted with vibrant and graphic musical intensity. The Concerto for Orchestra is one of Bartók’s last works and one of his best known and most accessible creations. Each of the five movements plays its own rôle, but the overriding message is a potently expressive affirmation of life.