For the complete Mandarin, Boulez is still the safest bet.
-- Gramophone [10/1993]
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It is nothing less than intriguing to find Pierre Boulez's whole interpretative personality significantly modified—at least on the evidence of this disc—by contact with the orchestra which for so many years Leonard Bernstein directed. Granted that two of Bartok's more abrasive works can never sound exactly gentle, these are interpretations that so far from following the pattern of diamond precision and emotional austerity we associate with Boulez in Britain, lean towards romantic expressiveness.
-- Edward Greenfield, Gramophone [1/1973, reviewing Miraculous Mandarin on LP, CBS 73031]
