It looks like winter's about over here, a fairly mild winter despite a 2-week cold snap that supplied the international news machine with lots of photos of people and bodies of water looking frostier than usual in the middle of Europe, and before too long I might even venture past the city limits of Budapest for the first time in months, or at least my little winter world of the 7th, 8th and 13th districts (and now swimming laps twice a week in the 14th), and find something with more widespread appeal than operas and classical concerts to write about. But for now, that's what I got.
But everyone loves Mozart, right? Greatest composer who ever lived. Actually, I place him second after Beethoven on the grounds that Mozart (and Bach at no. 3) were, partly by virtue of some personal audio pipeline to the cosmic spheres, essentially elevating the music of their own times to towering new heights, whereas Beethoven, the human untouched by angels, grunting and shoving, scratching and kicking, virtually single-handedly birthed a new musical era. But being the second-greatest composer since Australopithecus first rattled some dry bones together is nothing to sneeze at either.
One wonders if it was Iván Fischer's or some marketing guy's brilliant idea to get the top symphony orchestras and other musical talent in Hungary together each year to run a morning-to-night program of mini-concerts each late winter dedicated to a single composer, for which we've had a Tchaikovsky Marathon, a Schubert Marathon, and a Dvorak Marathon, for all of which I always seemed to manage to be out town. And to sell the tickets for each really inexpensively (approx. 3 euros for any seat in the cavernous Palace of Arts Béla Bártok Concert Hall, buy 3 get one free). So when tickets went on sale one day last fall I was all ready except I got hit with some editing to do that morning and when I finally looked at the ticket situation early afternoon, the Requiem, to be performed by the Budapest Festival Orchestra under Fischer himself as the crowning highlight of the evening, had infuriatingly already sold out. But no matter, there was plenty to choose from, and since the whole thing was simulcast on our very own Bartók Rádió, so you can, at least for the next few weeks, listen to it all on their website while improving your Hungarian right here:
http://hangtar.radio.hu/bartok#!#2012-02-26
Which is how I got to hear the requiem in the end. (Most of the performances actually start a few minutes after their schedule times, so you have to fast forward through some babbling in Hungarian, and they really are babbling).
It was also interesting to hear how the various orchestras stack up against the other at close quarters. Perhaps in the Requiem you can hear how the BFO deserves its reputation as a world class orchestra and from the tempos he uses, Iván Fischer's as one of the world's most inventive conductors. If you live in a bastion of civilization you can hear them on one of their many tours sooner or later, or you can just come to Budapest. It's always a pleasure to witness them perform.
Also I think of world-class stature, especially in the liveliness and subtlety of their strings, is the Budapest Phiharmonic Society, the opera house's orchestra and therefore my home team, which also plays symphonic music when the mood strikes them. Here at 17:00 under the baton of white-maned János Kovács ("John Smith") they play the overture to the magic flute and the Jupiter symphony. Here I confess to another mistake, which was, in my effort to test out acoustics in different parts of the hall, I got tickets way in the back for this concert, whereas for this one we should have been sitting in the "organ seats" a few feet behind the orchestra to get the effect I heard Zubin Mehta describe once with respect to the convergence of themes at the end of the Jupiter, supposedly at the time of writing the most complex symphony ever composed to date, of the entire universe spinning around you, like some early Pink Floyd concert (he didn't say that last part).
For the 19:00 performance of the clarinet concerto and Ch’io mi scordi di te, we did sit in the organ seats for a great view of the soloists' backs, but I was impressed both with them and the Pannon Philharmonic from Pécs under András Vass. I've also always liked the clarinet concerto which shows a humorous side, written in Mozart's final year when he was supposedly staring oblivion in the eye with the Requiem and the mysticism of the Magic Flute, at least if you believe Milos Forman. On the other hand maybe things were starting to pick up and he just happened to get sick and die. Happened all the time.
The matinee performances by the Hungarian Radio Orchestra and Hungarian State Railways Orchestra were a notch down from these previous groups, a little harsh sounding, although the soloists themselves were perfectly fine. Judging by the names of their sponsors they are probably a bit starved for funds, although I've seen the locomotive fiddlers do solid work with lighter fare in the past.
A lot of us downtown cosmopolitan types don't like the Palace of Arts and the adjoining National Theater for complex political reasons dating from its fitful construction during the current government parties first stab at governing the country in the late 90s - the arts and politics are nearly always deeply connected in Hungary and this remains an ongoing story that I might discuss some other time - but it's starting to grow on me as architecture. I can think of no other examples of a modern public buildings that reach this level of lavishness in Budapest. Remind me to do a survey here sometime of post-1989 buildings in Budapest that I find to have real merit. It won't be terribly long.
But here, at least, the acoustics are great, as long as your neighbor doesn't start flipping through his program and humming along during the performance, it's helping revitalize this formerly industrial embankment of the Danube, and it's got one of the best views in town.
It really is a European-level arts center. I should tear myself away from my opera house a little more often and check out what's going on down the river.
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