BARTÓK String Quartet No. 3 (arr. Konopka)
BARTÓK Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin

Music Director Franz Welser-Möst and the Orchestra thread two of Bartók’s demanding visions into a single, emotionally charged arc. Paired with favorites from Bartók’s ballet The Miraculous Mandarin, violist Stanley Konopka premieres his new arrangement of Bartók’s Third String Quartet — a score he devoured during his tumultuous Chicago adolescence, a time when “Bartók became kind of my Metallica.” Now amplified for double string orchestra, the music of the quartet swells to symphonic scale, taking on the expanded sonority long envisioned by Konopka.