Prom 37: Poetry in motion from the Budapest Festival Orchestra

In the first of the Budapest Festival Orchestra’s three Proms, Iván Fischer’s convention-disrupting ensemble brought both poetry and flair to a surprisingly conservative programme of Weber, Schumann and Mendelssohn.

Innovation has come to be expected from these forces and this was an evening of many surprises, from encore choices to musicians leaping to their feet. The first surprise was the oboist’s tuning routine: a quick flourish of the finale horn solo from Brahms 1 (or was it Flower of Scotland?), followed by an A for the woodwinds, a Bb for the brass, a G for the lower strings and a final A for the rest. The overture to Weber’s Der Freischütz was then tackled with a punchy dry sound and infectious joy. The horns sang (from high above the orchestra in the organ loft), timpani roared and Fischer wrung ever more drama from the music.

Sir András Schiff was the soloist for Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto. It is hard to imagine a more convincing impression of old friends enjoying each other’s company than the musical interaction between Schiff and Fischer. The tight ensemble allowed every detail of inner voices to be heard, Schiff giving way to the orchestra when necessary, and orchestra supporting the solo lines attentively. The neat intertwining of soloist, strings and woodwind in the slow movement was especially memorable. There was no excess of bravura in the outer movements, but rather a lyrical, poetic journey through the concerto built around a compelling sense of structure. The encores eschewed party pieces in favour of lighter fare: Brahms’ Lieber Schwalbe, Kleine Schwalbe (sung by the whole orchestra, accompanied humbly by Schiff), followed by Schumman’s wonderfully simple Der glückliche Bauer for Schiff alone.

Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony was tackled with similar attentiveness to beauty of sound, particularly highlighting the strikingly elegant sound of the string section. This paid dividends in the austere slow movement, where the violas and cellos sang with rich, woody timbre. At a relatively sedate tempo, the first movement strayed towards feeling curiously risk-averse and textural clarity fell victim to the Royal Albert Hall’s capricious acoustics in a slightly smudgy scherzo, but more fire was kindled for the finale. Here, with pace renewed, Fischer guided the orchestra through the ebb and flow of the movement with beauty and spark in turn. The coda saw another surprise, as the orchestra rose, section by section, for their go at the “big tune”. By the time even the cellos had risen for the final six notes of the symphony, the mood was one of a party, which continued into a rowdy Slavonic Dance by Dvořák to finish the evening.