The familiar seen and heard anew – Ivan Fischer, Francesco Piemontesi and the Budapest Festival Orchestra in Schumann, Dohnanyi and Strauss

 

Some time ago, Hillary Hahn played the Sibelius Violin Concerto in Alicante’s ADDA hall in a way that I described as utterly new. Though I had heard the work many times, at least hundreds, this performance opened my eyes anew to its qualities, many of which I had clearly hitherto missed. The same quality of experience applied to Francesco Piemontesi’s interpretation last night of the Schumann Piano Concerto.

It’s a work I have perhaps heard not just hundreds, but thousands of times. Frankly, I don’t have much time for Robert Schumann for reasons I won’t go into. Let’s just say that I tend to tolerate his music’s presence on concert programs without really seeing the point. I tend to find his music over-planned, too self-conscious, perhaps over-eager to present a facade. I admit that he may not be the only artist at fault in such areas!

After Francesco Piemontesi’s performance of the Piano Concerto, however, I feel I may have just been missing the point over the years, or perhaps it might be that the norm in performance is to splash the canvas of interpretation too liberally with respect and too little with humanity. In the hands of Francesco Piemontesi, there was hardly a phrase of this piece that was not “interpreted”. Now sometimes that’s a euphemism for “over-played” or “over-done”. In this case, it meant the use of subtle dynamics, changes of pace, nuances of touch, all designed to bring the music to life. The overall effect was to render the solo part conversational, even personal. I doubt there was a member of the audience who did not feel that this was a personal occasion, shared only by themselves and the soloist. The sense of communication was all-pervading, with the orchestra and soloist never in conflict, always cooperating to create musical sense. And what orchestra playing it was!

Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra seemed to weave in and out of the textures of the piano, never conflicting, never competing and never overwhelming. And so, by the end, I felt literally as if I had heard the work for the first time, so different was the experience from my expectation.

The Budapest Festival Orchestra under Ivan Fischer began the concert with a performance of Dohnanyi’s Symphonic Minutes. Though less of an innovator than Bartok and perhaps less melodious than Kodaly, Dohnanyi shares the same heritage and his music, witty, sumptuous and yet also neo-classical deserves to be played more.

The second half of Richard Strauss presented a pair of tone poems, Don Juan and Till Eugenspiegel sandwiching The Dance of the Seven Veils from Salome. These two tone poems demand superb orchestral playing and coordination, and right from the opening bars of Don Juan, it was obvious that the Budapest Festival Orchestra both relished and warmed to the task. The result was stunningly vivid, spectacular and exhilarating. Salome’s dance was colourful and deliberately graphic. Then came a masterstroke.

At the start of the evening it was noticeable that Ivan Fischer had placed the basses at the back of the orchestra. This seem to create a balanced, even orchestral texture, through which detail was only enhanced. For Till Eulenspiegel, Ivan Fisher moved the horn section to the front to sit like a quartet of soloists around the podium. The effect was to amplify Till’s pranks, enhance the story and render the performance ultra-vivid, almost surreal.

An encore also broke the mould. Instead of an orchestral lollipop, three members of the Budapest Festival Orchestra played a piece of traditional Hungarian peasant string band music. Here were the quarter tones and strange harmonies of the type that Bartok, Kodaly, Dohnanyi and others had tried to record, in their estimation before they disappeared. Here they were alive, well and rapturously received. It really was an evening of surprises.

Costa Blanca Arts Update - Adam Fischer, Elisabeth Leonskaja and the Dusseldorf Symphoniker in Beethoven and Mahler in Alicante's ADDA

 

I have seldom had the privilege of participating in a concert audience that showed their appreciation with such heartfelt enthusiasm. At the end of this performance of Mahler’s First Symphony, the fourth time that this symphony had been performed in this hall in recent years, this particular orchestra, the Dusseldorf Symphoniker, and this unique conductor, Adam Fischer, was cheered loud and long by admirers who stood to pay their respect to the quality of what they had just heard. Again the power of live performance is underlined as yet another life changing experience is perhaps surprisingly provided by a work whose intricacies were already familiar to most of the listeners.

And it must be said that the first half of the evening had already proved to be equally memorable via a performance of an equally familiar piece, the Emperor Concerto of Beethoven. The soloist was to have been Andras Schiff, but he had unfortunately had a fall and could not perform. We must wish him a speedy recovery.

His place at the piano was thus occupied by Elisabeth Leonskaja, no less, and she proved to be much more than a mere replacement. Throughout, her precision and touch were nothing short of breath-taking, especially in the quieter, more subtle parts of a work that too often is treated as a tour de force, which it definitely is not. The concerto provides a soloist with an opportunity to communicate Beethoven’s overall musical idea. Of course there is bravura, but as always with Beethoven, the meaning is in the contrasts, and these must be as vivid as possible. And it’s not just a matter of loud and soft, fast and slow, because the true contrast in this piece lies in the juxtaposition of tenderness alongside the boasting, intimacy alongside grandiloquence. Overall, it is a work that reminds us of our humility and humanity, though it also acknowledges that at times we have to make a show of things.

Elisabeth Leonskaja not only achieved the right balance, not only communicated these contrasts perfectly, but she also brought that something extra, that indefinable quality that we can all sense but never describe when we are in the presence of genius. And that genius became even more apparent when she offered her audience a substantial encore, a piece whish explored the impressionistic and symbolist imagery of music a century later than the work she had just performed. The result was spellbinding.

In the second half, it was the work, not the performer that was the replacement. Originally Bartok’s Miraculous Mandarin had been programmed and its replacement brought a certain amount of disappointment to this particular member of the audience. I should not have been concerned, because what transpired over the fifty minutes of the second half was nothing less than miraculous.

Misgivings turned to gold as Adam Fischer’s clearly magical relationship with both the orchestra and the work unfolded. It seemed like the conductor was convinced he could drag extra expression from his players by brute force, persistence and dogged insistence. To describe him as living every note would be understatement, since his relationship with the piece is clearly deeper than that. At one point, there was real concern that he had put too much into his work as he stepped aside to take a short breather. In reality, we all needed that little space. The attention to detail was phenomenal, right down to the balance of the offstage trumpets at the start being controlled by just the right distance to leave the side doors ajar. At the end, Adam Fischer insisted that the final fanfares be delivered by standing horn players and the sound was resplendent. But again, it was in the vision of the overall balance of the symphony that Adam Fischer displayed his complete genius.

The inclusion of a Brahms Hungarian Dance as an encore certainly did not compensate for the missing Bartok, but by then we all felt that we had at least visited the conductor’s cultural home, albeit from afar.