This concert saw the Budapest Festival Orchestra reduced to a period ensemble of fewer than ten musicians plus soloists for Bach’s cantata ‘Herr, gehe nicht ins Gericht mit deinem Knecht’, and after the interval packed closely together as they filled the large stage of the Konzerthaus with forces well in excess of the not-insignificant minimum required for a big Bruckner symphony.
Librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte billed Don Giovanni a “dramma giocoso,” literally a “jocular drama,” and, unsurprisingly, finding the balance between comedy and drama is the key to any good production.
