Budapest, a city whose musical legacy rivals its Austro-Hungarian past in grandeur and fascination, dusted its aura over the Royal Albert Hall last week: from the Budapest Festival Orchestra and its co-founder, Iván Fischer, to his childhood friend and collaborator, the pianist András Schiff; to the composers Béla Bartók, György Ligeti, György Kurtág and Dora Pejačević, all of whom were born or spent time in the Hungarian capital, notably in studies at the celebrated Franz Liszt Academy, established by the composer-pianist whose name it takes.
The gregarious Fischer, master of ceremonies as well as conductor, led three Proms, including an audience-choice matinee (heard on Radio 3 – and pithily described by the presenter, Petroc Trelawny, as “delicious chaos”). Choosing from a list of options, the works to be performed were decided by crowd decibel level. I regret that Haydn, long based at Hungary’s stupendous Esterházy Palace, missed the mark: he would have been radical among the inevitably safe choices. This orchestra’s zest and idiomatic style would convert anyone to his music: why does this genius still fall into the shadows?
To acknowledge this year’s centenary celebrations, Ligeti (1923-2006) featured in Sunday’s final concert. Mysteries of the Macabre offers a nine-minute glimpse into the composer’s absurdist opera, Le Grand Macabre. Revealing the work in all its darkness and dadaist truth, the agile soprano Anna-Lena Elbert hurtled on stage with comedic verve, and an entirely unconnected acrobatic routine with her high heels. (“Am I to take my shoes off too?” enquired Fischer, swivelling round on the podium in mock alarm.)
This sizzling energy informed the rest of the concert. Schiff was soloist in an intimate, meticulous performance of Bartók’s Piano Concerto No 3 (1945), its sinewy lyricism a far cry from anything we might – always a danger – call the composer’s norm. Both the Ligeti and the Bartók held up a mirror to Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony No 3 in E flat (1803), enabling its revolutionary spirit to burn anew. Fischer and his musicians play with immense freedom as well as accuracy. String vibrato is held back until required. Woodwinds and horns opt for beauty of phrasing, rather than heft. True to character, the versatile Hungarians also performed klezmer and abandoned their instruments to sing encores as part of the mix.
The music of Pejačević (1885-1923), born in Budapest but Croatian by nationality, was not performed at the Proms until this season: a triumph of indifference, now being addressed. The BBC Symphony Orchestra and its chief conductor, Sakari Oramo, are proving excellent advocates, having already recorded her symphony in F sharp minor (on Chandos), which they played with confident finesse at Tuesday’s Prom: swathes of colour, rampant brass fanfares, all urgent and jubilant, if at times reliant on repetition rather than development. In the first half of the Prom, the German pianist Martin Helmchen made a formidable debut in Brahms’ Piano Concerto No 2, virtuosity always at the service of poetry in this magnificent work, and evident in the tender encore (Brahms’ Intermezzo in A, Op 118 No 2).
Leonard Bernstein’s short opera Trouble in Tahiti (1952), directed by Finn Lacey and conducted by Olivia Tait, is a wry account of a day in a humdrum marriage (later absorbed into the composer’s A Quiet Place) and manages to compress an entire world of little-white-house, check-tablecloth suburban angst into 45 minutes. Dinah and Sam are in a state of marital irritation, even though their lives are what they always wanted: job, gym, Junior. (Bernstein’s own complex but devoted marriage is the subject of a forthcoming Netflix biopic just announced, starring Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan.) With two soloists (Alexandra Meier, Peter Norris), a small instrumental ensemble and a stylish trio of jazz-scat singers, it lends itself to simple, intimate staging: an ideal show for Grimeborn.
This plucky festival, which runs with several shows until 23 September, gives emerging singers the chance to try out big roles in small venues within the Arcola theatre in Dalston, east London. Often the works are unfamiliar, but the chance to experiment is paramount: a forthcoming staging of Puccini’s Turandot will have an all ESEA (East and South East Asian) cast, with the ice-maiden princess of the title played as a digital fantasy, “carved from the online world of fetish and erotica”: miss it if you dare.
Star ratings (out of five):
Prom 39 ★★★★
Prom 40 ★★★★
Trouble in Tahiti ★★★
All Proms are available on BBC Sounds. The Proms continue until 9 September
