Budapest orchestra shows fiery brilliance in lightish program

The Adrienne Arsht Center was effectively converted into a cafe on the bank of the Danube Wednesday night with Tokay flowing freely, paprikash and palacsinta served, and Hungarian musicians providing an al fresco serenade.

The Budapest Festival Orchestra made its Miami debut at the Knight Concert Hall with an intriguing if strange program that displayed the ensemble’s corporate excellence and tonal gleam, but rather belatedly and to too little an extent. The event was presented by the Concert Association of Florida.

Founded in 1983, the Hungarian orchestra remains one of Europe’s finest, with whipcrack brilliance, rich string tone and refined woodwinds. And while enjoyable enough on its own terms, there was a musical lightness of being in the first half, which concentrated on gypsy-inspired fiddle music and showpieces.

Music director Ivan Fischer was an engaging host with his low-key verbal notes, charting the pungent influence of gypsy music on composers such as Brahms and Liszt, and introducing cimbalom player Oszkar Okros and father-and-son violinists, Jozsef Lendvay, Sr. and Jr.

The evening began with Fischer and Okros alone on stage. Following a brief Cliff Notes guide on the cimbalom’s history, Okras performed a solo improvisation that segued from evocative melancholy to virtuosic brilliance, a beaming Fischer looking on.

With the full orchestra on board, Josef Lendvay, Sr., schooled in the Hungarian folk tradition, came out for a concertante retooling of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 3, interpolating a rustic gypsy solo cadenza. Brahms’ Hungarian Dances Nos. 15 and 1 were performed, the latter in what Fischer claimed was a spontaneous Magyar jam session with Lendvay and Okras adding solo lines on top of the orchestra, stylishly and with idiomatic zigeneur spirit.

Jozsef Lendvay the younger entered, looking like a Central European rock musician. Unlike his father, Lendvay Jr., is classically trained and displayed staggering virtuosity in a take-no-prisoners account of Sarasate’s uber-gypsy fiddle showpiece, Zigeunerweisen.

Lendvay, pere et fils, joined forces for a duo-violin revamp on yet another Brahms Hungarian Dance, No. 11; Fischer indicated this would be the first time father and son performed together, which seems unlikely since they’ve already done this program elsewhere on tour. Both violinists conveyed the music’s more dolce expression but it made an odd choice to end the first half.

More substantial Brahms closed the evening with the German composer’s Symphony No. 1. The sterling qualities of the Hungarian ensemble were finally in the spotlight rather than as backup band: a rich but refined sonority, polished corporate musicianship, and hair-trigger volatility.

Fischer’s take on the mighty C-minor symphony lacked nothing in intensity with an exhilarating coda and the drama of the long opening movement, proceeding in a seamless arc. Yet most striking were the refinement and elegance of the performance, qualities rarely on display in this repertoire.

Fischer’s direction was never idiosyncratic but full of inspired touches as with the pre-Allegro foreboding of the outer movements, his majestic drawing out of the climactic horn theme, and graceful attacca turn into the finale’s openig bars. Perhaps most notable was the serenity of the slow movement, with silken strings and bucolic woodwinds that were chracterful yet perfectly integrated into the musical texture. It’s too bad that there were not more opportunities Wednesday for this wonderful orchestra to shine.

Ivan Fisher's orchestra fuses unlikely union of music styles

by Bradley Bambarger/The Star-Ledger
Thursday January 22, 2009, 3:10 PM
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Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. When and where: 8 p.m. Friday, State Theatre, New Brunswick; 8 p.m. Saturday, Carnegie Hall, New York. How much: $30-$75 in New Brunswick. Call (732) 246-7469 or visit statetheatrenj.org. $27-$81 in New York. Call (212) 247-7800 or visit carnegiehall.org.
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In the 19th century, the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian empire was the nearest faraway place for those looking east from Vienna -- not exactly foreign, but exotic. In particular, composers loved the freedom and fire of the Gypsy music they heard there.

Brahms, a German-born Vienna resident, picked up cheap sheet music of traditional Gypsy tunes and wove inventive arrangements around them for a popular set of "Hungarian Dances." Liszt, born in Hungary but the epitome of the Western European cosmopolitan, used Gypsy melodies and rhythms as jumping off points for his own nostalgic "Hungarian Rhapsodies."

There is no better ensemble to embody this East-meets-West, structure-plus-spice ideal than the Budapest Festival Orchestra. The group was founded 25 years ago -- by conductor Ivan Fischer, among others -- on a manifesto of individual energy, creative risk and fun. Even putting the "festival" in its name was about suggesting celebration over stuffiness.

Fischer and company open Carnegie Hall's two-week, multi-artist "Celebrating Hungary" festival Saturday after they give concertgoers a preview Friday in New Brunswick. The program is special in that it replicates the Budapest orchestra's mold-breaking recordings of Brahms' and Liszt's Hungarian-themed works, featuring Gypsy musicians for the ultimate in native zest -- the Lendvay father-and-son fiddle duo and cimbalom player Oszkar Ökrös.

"I think Brahms would've loved the way we perform this music with these players," says Fischer from Budapest. "He wanted to incorporate the Gypsies' folk art into his classical world -- their imagination and improvisation, their richly ornamented style of playing. These artists challenge us to bring more to the music than just what is on the page."

The younger Lendvay, the classically trained Jozsef Jr., will also solo in Pablo De Sarasate's Old World showpiece "Zigeunerweisen" ("Gypsy Airs"). To cap the night, Fischer will lead the orchestra in Brahms' drama-filled Symphony No. 1 -- not a work with Gypsy themes, of course, but one that may profit from the night's improvisatory atmosphere.

"It will be fascinating to see how people hear the Brahms' First after all the Gypsy music," Fischer says. "We will all be affected. I think the orchestra will perform with a subtle but noticeable spice -- playing the rhythms with more rubato, reacting to each other more in the moment."

Hungary produced some of the 20th century's greatest conductors: Georg Solti, George Szell, Eugene Ormandy, Fritz Reiner, Antal Dorati, Ferenc Fricsay. Fischer, who turned 58 this week, is in that line of artistry, but his mellow charm and individualist sensibility are worlds away from the my-way-or-the-highway method of Szell and Reiner. Characteristically, though, Fischer is generous and mindful of history, as he points out that "it was a different world for them -- raising an orchestra in Cleveland to world-class status as Szell did took unyielding standards."

But Fischer does wonder what Szell or Reiner would think of his Gypsy-bolstered way with the Brahms and Liszt pieces: "Their generation was concerned with fidelity to the letter of their scores. They were modern in their day, reacting against a Romantic tradition that perhaps allowed itself too many liberties. As with everything, music goes in cycles. We have plenty of orchestral skill and discipline now. Like many conductors of my generation, I am more interested in the source and style of the music, the spirit of the score."