From Hungary with love: Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra glow in Brahms

If Mozart’s Don Giovanni is often regarded as a director’s graveyard, the same could be said of Brahms 3 and conductors. Of Brahms’ four symphonies, the Third is the hardest to pull off… or at least the easiest to foul up. It’s a passionate work, yet conductors can be tempted to overmilk the famous Poco allegretto third movement, and the fact that the outer movements, despite containing heroic moments of great vigour, both end on a subdued, quiet note can defeat all but the best. There is, in short, a temptation to tinker, to meddle where it’s least needed. 

Not so Iván Fischer. With his Budapest Festival Orchestra, travelling up the Danube to Vienna's Konzerthaus, he conducted a heart-bursting rendition that was purposeful without being driven too hard, tender but maintaining the flow of the music; in short, trusting the score. Fischer’s gestures were gentle, inviting his players to collaborate, gently maintaining the beat with his lengthy baton; aggression was limited to the occasional clenched fist. 

The playing glowed magnificently. Although relatively young (founded 1983), the Budapest Festival Orchestra has a distinctive, rich sound that stands comparison with its Viennese and Czech Philharmonic neighbours. Woodwinds blended harmoniously here and the brass, buried behind the strings on the lowest of risers, never obliterated. But it’s the spirit of their playing that was most touching, a sheer love of music-making, epitomised by white-haired Péter Szabó, leading the cellos affectionately, and Uxía Martínez Botana, digging vigorously into the score with her double bass colleagues, lined up along the rear of the platform. 

Although in F major, the three chords that open the symphony belong to F minor – F–A flat–F – a variant on Brahms’s F-A-F motto, “Frei aber froh” (Free but happy), already setting up an instability which only resolves itself in the symphony’s restful final pages. Fischer turned the screw on those chords at each first movement reiteration, tightening the drama. Free but happy? Who was Brahms kidding? Fischer allowed the Andante to breathe while maintaining a pulse, the lyrical third movement was beautifully fluid – no treacly schmaltz here – and the finale erupted stormily before gently unwinding to its contented resolution. 

“Frei aber froh” was Brahms’ response to Joseph Joachim’s “Frei aber einsam” (Free but lonely) motto. Joachim’s presence was felt in the first half with the Violin Concerto in D major, composed for the great virtuoso in 1878. Joachim’s role here was magnificently taken by Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, drawing a rich, dark caramel tone from his 1741 “Kreisler” Guarnerius “del Gesu”. His playing was breathtaking, gripping in Joachim’s mighty first movement cadenza, limpid in the tender Adagio (kudos Johannes Grosso’s milky oboe) and rousing in the Hungarian Dance-inflected finale. But Szeps-Znaider is not one to play to the gallery with flamboyant “look at me” gestures, collegiately joining the orchestra in the opening tutti and often playing as if for himself, eyes closed, completely bound up in his love for the music.  

That love was evident in his Estrallita encore with the BFO strings, dedicated to the violinist Alma Maria Rosé, the niece of Gustav Mahler, who died in Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944. Szeps-Znaider discovered an old concert poster her in his dressing room, and explained that his daughter was named after her, thus sharing the encore’s dedication. 

Each half has opened with a Brahms Hungarian Dance and the BFO kept with the script for the evening’s other touching encore, the players laying aside their instruments for a beautifully sung rendition of Abendständchen, Fischer moulding the melody affectionately. The hugs – and on-stage selfies – afterwards symbolised the great spirit in this great orchestra.