The Miraculous Mandarin was composed by Bela Bartok who conceived of it as “dance music.” In its earliest performances it was a pantomime or ballet. It was controversial as it involved “forbidden love” and violence. The Miraculous Mandarin was even banned in Germany in 1926. After that sucess de scandal it was mostly performed as a concert suite.

There are many recordings of The Miraculous Mandarin most of which have interesting covers. Here are three of them:

Here’s Zubin Mehta conducting the introduction to The Miraculous Mandarin in 2009: