The Budapest Festival Orchestra is unique amongst the world’s symphony orchestras for having its own baroque ensemble. So it is no coincidence that, this year, the spotlight will fall on the BFO’s early music ensemble and J. S. Bach.
Iván Fischer begins every Festival Orchestra rehearsal with a Bach chorale, an intonation exercise to relax the players upon arrival. This season, our audience will have three opportunities to experience such intimacy when we connect symphony concerts with baroque music-making, by opening with works by Bach on period instruments. “The orchestra of the future resembles a production company; it can stage symphonic, early music and contemporary concerts, not to mention operas. And it can even function as a choir” – says Fischer.
Our autumn concert will feature Bach’s Third Orchestral Suite, the autograph of which was discovered by Mendelssohn. The ‘Air’ movement has become an integral part of our everyday lives; you can hear it in lifts, when you’re on hold during a phone call, at weddings or in romantic film scenes.
Seven-time Grammy Award-winning pianist Emanuel Ax would be a perfect complement to the “orchestra of the future”. A devotee of contemporary composers, with several world premières in recent years, he is going to be playing a true classic with the BFO, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, a serious, profound, yet popular work.
Tchaikovsky struggles with impending doom in his Fourth Symphony, but ultimately he prescribes happiness as a panacea for all. The composer put a great amount into this piece and he loved it much more than anything he had composed up till then. There were many at the première who doubted the symphony’s power, it was considered a semi-barbarian, unfinished piece. But today it has found its rightful place in the symphonic repertoire.
