Budapest Festival Orchestra Delights at Lincoln Center

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Wednesday, 08 February 2017 14:19

Written by Jack Angstreich

This season, the Great Performers series of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts has been featuring a Ludwig van Beethoven symphony cycle with the superb musicians of the Budapest Festival Orchestra, one of the finest ensembles of our time, under the magisterial direction of Ivan Fischer, one of the best living conductors. (The appearances of these superior artists are a highlight of Great Performers, as well as of the New York concert season, each year.) The first half of the cycle was presented last fall while the last two concerts were given on the afternoon of Sunday, February 5th and on the evening of Monday, February 6th, at David Geffen Hall.

Both programs proceeded chronologically,  with the first opening with a terrific account of the wonderful Symphony No. 1, the composer's essay in the genre most indebted to his great forbears, Franz Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, although the menuetto especially prefigures theechtBeethoven, already sounding like his celebrated scherzos.

The extraordinary soloist, Richard Goode, then took the stage for a sterling performance of the magnificent Piano Concerto No. 4, from the composer's middle, "heroic" period. The program concluded with the ultra-familiar Symphony No. 5, written not long after, but this proved one of the most memorable renditions I have heard in the concert hall, if only for the thrilling entry of student musicians from The Juilliard School and Bard College Conservatory of Music, swelling the size of the orchestra, during the exhilarating final movement.

The next day's concert was even more impressive, opening with a glorious, unexpectedly lucid account of the marvelous Symphony No. 8, which never sounded closer to Haydn and Mozart. Nor have I ever encountered the wit in this work more forcefully evoked—I dare say it is the most exquisite performance of this piece I have yet witnessed.

The concert closed exaltedly with a breathtaking, confident reading of the monumental Symphony No. 9. The excellent soloists included soprano Laura Aikin, mezzo-soprano Kelley O'Connor, tenor Robert Dean Smith and basso Matthew Rose but the real stars were the fabulous members of the Concert Chorale of New York—under the distinguished direction of James Bagwell—whom Fischer strategically placed throughout the audience, to moving effect. It was a truly magnificent finale.

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