The atypical Budapest Festival Orchestra returns to fascinate at the San Sebastian Musical Fortnight | Culture

The Budapest Festival Orchestra begins its performances in a way unlike any other symphonic ensemble. Before it even begins to play, its tuning ritual is unique. The oboe plays an A for its woodwind colleagues, but also gives a B flat for the brass and a G for the string section. This is what its instrumentalists did on 17 and 18 August, in their return to the San Sebastian Musical Fortnight, now in its 85th edition. On other occasions, the oboe adds flourishes or even the woodwinds take on the sound traces of a Bach chorale.

Their endings are also atypical. Far from playing the usual festival encore, they crowned their first concert, last Saturday at the Kursaal, with all their female instrumentalists transformed into an excellent choir. And they sang, accompanied by a string sextet, the beautiful Home (Pain), the last of his Moravian duets, op. 38, in the key of B major tinged with despondency. An encore they already performed at the Musical Fortnight in 2016, when they were the orchestra in residence.

This prestigious Hungarian symphonic ensemble, directed by Iván Fischer (Budapest, 73 years old) since its creation 41 years ago, has been a constant presence at the veteran musical event in August. It was their seventh visit in the last fifteen years and they began by repeating exactly the same programme as their debut in 2009: Overture on Hebrew Themesby Prokofiev, followed by Violin Concerto No. 2by Bartók, and with the Seventh Symphonyby Dvořák, as the second part. The soloist was then the violinist Leonidas Kavakos and now it is Patricia Kopatchinskaja. This small change has considerably renewed the result.

The Moldovan violinist (Chisinau, 47 years old) continues to be a torrent of energy and innovation on stage. The nickname “Janis Joplin of classical music” that the German weekly put him The Spiegelin 2009, remains in full force. She appeared on the Kursaal stage wearing the dress painted for her by the Spanish composer Francisco Coll and the first thing she did was to put aside her red shoes to play barefoot. But the most interesting thing about her performance He does this with the violin and in front of Bartók’s score, which he respects and refreshes in equal parts.

Kopatchinskaja found in Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra ideal travelling companions for her impressive interpretation of the Second concert by the Hungarian composer. In the allegro non troppo He masterfully brought the rhapsodic tone and intensified the contrasts inspired by the barracks verbunkos. But the variations on the Andante Tranquilo were the best of the evening. In No. 4 (slow) displayed imagination by hanging garlands from the ceiling and then causing hilarity with his superhuman handling of the rebound of the bow or ricochetin No. 6 (comodo). In fact, the sound character built by the violinist in the second movement grew even more in the third, Allegro moltowhich intensified its character as a comic variation of the first.

The signs of musical complicity between the Moldovan violinist and the Hungarian orchestra were constant. Proof of this is the amusing encore she played as a duet with her first cello, Péter Szabó: a skilfully dramatized arrangement with pizzicatos of Presto in C minor Wq 114/3by CPE Bach. Fischer listened to him sitting discreetly at the back of the stage, having provided all the timbral details in Bartók, such as that idea of ​​placing the harp in front of the podium. He did the same, at the beginning, in the Prokofiev overture, with the clarinet soloist, Ákos Ács, whom he invited to play his melody as a soloist. klezmer and even acted as a human music stand while he conducted so that he could read his score.

Another distinctive sign of this orchestra is the smile with which they make music. A gesture that always comes from the conductor and turns the ensemble into a gigantic chamber group. We saw this on Saturday in the exceptional version they played of the Symphony No. 7by Dvořák. A reading that connected the Czech composer with his admired Brahms through the Hungarian tradition. It is no coincidence that the sombre theme that opens the work occurred to the composer in 1884, when he saw a train full of Hungarian patriots entering the Prague station. Little adageFischer added flexibility to all the Brahmsian references. The dramatic fluidity of the vivacious (scherzo) spread the musical richness of the allegro (finale) And we hear power and refinement in the strings along with exquisite solos from the woodwinds, where the flutist Gabriella Pivon, Fischer’s wife and recipient of many of his smiles, stood out.

The second concert last Sunday, August 18, was dedicated entirely to Mozart. The program was slightly different from the one they played in 2016, although it was also presided over by the RequiemThe overall result was less well-rounded than the day before. Fischer chose to reduce the orchestra to about forty musicians, but without making any historicist concessions. And the Symphony No. 38 “Prague” The Salzburger sounded without many ambitions, but also without any of his repetitions.

The novelty of Mozart’s mass for the dead was the participation of the Orfeón Donostiarra (eight years ago they sang it with the Collegium Vocale Gent). With almost 120 choristers it did not seem an ideal combination in front of an orchestra three times smaller, but the excellent quality of the historic Basque choir, directed by José Antonio Sainz, paired ideally, in the introit, with Fischer’s Hungarian instrumentalists. And their contrapuntal fluidity in the kyrie promoted an excellent version of the work. The fundamentalists of historicism should remember, as Miguel Ángel Marín (Acantilado) has done, the extensive tradition that this work has since the 19th century in similar and even superior choral formations.

With an outstanding orchestra and an excellent choir, the lowest point of the Requiem were the vocal soloists. The exception was the bass-baritone Hanno Müller-Brachmann, who stood out alongside trombonist Balázs Szakson at the beginning of tuba mirum. But apart from the most beautiful numbers in the sequence, the interpretation elevated the parts of the work written by Franz Xaver Süssmayr, such as the sanctus and the agnusdéi, where several people left the room as if this were no longer part of the Requiem by Mozart. The magical eight seconds of silence at the end of the last chord confirmed its effect on the audience that filled the Kursaal.

One of the commemorations of this 85th edition of the Donostiarra Musical Fortnight has been the centenary of the sculptor Eduardo Chillida (1924-2002). The event has coincided with the culmination of the cycle of the fifteen quartets of Dmitri Shostakovich by the young Gerhard Quartet, in the Caserío Zabalaga del Chillida Leku, in neighbouring Hernani. A project that began in 2021 with the quartets Second and Thirdand was completed after four more concerts, last Friday, August 16, with the quartets Fourteenth and Fifteenth. The first violin of the group, Lluís Castán, acknowledged at the end how much they have grown with the experience, which they closed by playing an arrangement of the aria of the Goldberg Variationsby Bach, as a tribute to the favourite composer of both Shostakovich and the sculptor from San Sebastian.

The atmosphere was ideal, both because of the evening light, the acoustics, and the limited capacity of a hundred spectators. The performance included brilliant first readings of both works, from 1973 and 1974, set in the final years of the Russian composer. Music of a spiritual density within the reach of few chamber ensembles, here with the additional challenge of having the violinist Maria Florea replacing Judit Bardolet. If in the Fourteenth The ensemble failed to capture the anguish that serves as the mortar of its three movements, everything improved in the most complex and introspective Fifteenth. Six movements obsessed with death that the Gerhards opened from tense statism. And whose architecture they were revealing between the tense use of crescendosolo cadences, undulating textures and mysterious sounds, as if it were a sound sculpture by Chillida.