Strictly speaking, I'm 2 weeks late (as usual) with this, but I wanted to put this down for the record. In NYC, I saw the Budapest Festival Orchestra for the first time live, with Ivan Fischer, at Avery Fisher Hall. Having enjoyed their performances from The Proms and hearing several CDs, I was very much looking forward to this concert, which had this program:
DSCH: Selections from "Suite for variety orchestra in eight parts", (a) March, (b) Little polka, (c) Lyric waltz, (d) Dance No. 1
Bernstein: Serenade, with Liza Ferschtman, violin (pinch-hitting for Janine Jansen)
Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 2
At the very start, when Ivan Fischer walked from stage right/house left on stage, he struck up the orchestra immediately, without giving us time to applaud, diving right into the DSCH "March". We applauded briefly at the start, but then Fischer encouraged rhymthic clapping at suitable points. This immediately sent out vibes of "hey, we're going to have a good time this afternoon". The saxophone players were positioned to the left of the conductor's podium for the DSCH in a cluster, which helped them stand out in their big moments in the waltz. BTW, there was audience applause after each movement, but in this suite, that was eminently forgivable, especially given the degree of conducting ham from Fischer for this opener, which actually fit just fine. This also put me in mind of that "Audience Choice" Prom that they did back in 2011, of which slightly more anon.
It turned out to be a smart move to put the sax players there, because then all the stage hands had to do for the Bernstein was to remove those stands and chairs, and not have to move anything else. Liza Ferschtman did have the music in front of her, and she and Fischer did have quite a fair bit of eye contact during the performance. I almost wondered if this was LF's first outing with the Bernstein Serenade, but I might be reading too much there. In any event, very fine performance, and excellent string tone, with dollops of percussion.
I managed to cadge a seat upstairs for the second half, and then it became clearer to me why the orchestra sounded so good in AFH, their intrinsic merits aside, because AFH has historically been a problematic hall acoustically. Fischer put the double basses in a row at the back, with the woodwinds in front of them, and split the brass to be on the same plane as the winds, on each side of them. The horns were house left/stage right, and the trombones, trumpets & tuba were house right/stage left. Thus there was no brass "blare" that tends to be characteristic of American orchestras, which tend to put the brass on risers well towards the back. While I haven't heard the BFO/Fischer CD of Rachmaninoff 2 for comparison, in this context, the performance was very, very fine indeed, well paced, neither unduly rushed in the brisker passages nor overly milking the big tunes in the slow movement. Solid, rich sound, but not overkill in the schmaltz factor.
After all this, I saw some stands being whipped out on stage and one player strolling to his seat, which obviously telegraphed an encore in the works. The encore turned out to be, of all things, "Blue Tango" of Leroy Anderson. Nicely done as a palate cleanser, with the saxophones from the start standing on the side at those stands that were whipped out after the Rachmaninoff. I remember that both the Anderson and the DSCH selections were on the list of pieces that the Proms audience could choose from that evening.
So not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon in NYC
.
DSCH: Selections from "Suite for variety orchestra in eight parts", (a) March, (b) Little polka, (c) Lyric waltz, (d) Dance No. 1
Bernstein: Serenade, with Liza Ferschtman, violin (pinch-hitting for Janine Jansen)
Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 2
At the very start, when Ivan Fischer walked from stage right/house left on stage, he struck up the orchestra immediately, without giving us time to applaud, diving right into the DSCH "March". We applauded briefly at the start, but then Fischer encouraged rhymthic clapping at suitable points. This immediately sent out vibes of "hey, we're going to have a good time this afternoon". The saxophone players were positioned to the left of the conductor's podium for the DSCH in a cluster, which helped them stand out in their big moments in the waltz. BTW, there was audience applause after each movement, but in this suite, that was eminently forgivable, especially given the degree of conducting ham from Fischer for this opener, which actually fit just fine. This also put me in mind of that "Audience Choice" Prom that they did back in 2011, of which slightly more anon.
It turned out to be a smart move to put the sax players there, because then all the stage hands had to do for the Bernstein was to remove those stands and chairs, and not have to move anything else. Liza Ferschtman did have the music in front of her, and she and Fischer did have quite a fair bit of eye contact during the performance. I almost wondered if this was LF's first outing with the Bernstein Serenade, but I might be reading too much there. In any event, very fine performance, and excellent string tone, with dollops of percussion.
I managed to cadge a seat upstairs for the second half, and then it became clearer to me why the orchestra sounded so good in AFH, their intrinsic merits aside, because AFH has historically been a problematic hall acoustically. Fischer put the double basses in a row at the back, with the woodwinds in front of them, and split the brass to be on the same plane as the winds, on each side of them. The horns were house left/stage right, and the trombones, trumpets & tuba were house right/stage left. Thus there was no brass "blare" that tends to be characteristic of American orchestras, which tend to put the brass on risers well towards the back. While I haven't heard the BFO/Fischer CD of Rachmaninoff 2 for comparison, in this context, the performance was very, very fine indeed, well paced, neither unduly rushed in the brisker passages nor overly milking the big tunes in the slow movement. Solid, rich sound, but not overkill in the schmaltz factor.
After all this, I saw some stands being whipped out on stage and one player strolling to his seat, which obviously telegraphed an encore in the works. The encore turned out to be, of all things, "Blue Tango" of Leroy Anderson. Nicely done as a palate cleanser, with the saxophones from the start standing on the side at those stands that were whipped out after the Rachmaninoff. I remember that both the Anderson and the DSCH selections were on the list of pieces that the Proms audience could choose from that evening.
So not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon in NYC
.
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