Bach, Bartok, Fischer

Usher Hall 8/8/25

 Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer (conductor), Guy Braunstein (violin)

 Conductor, composer, opera director and tutor Iván Fischer led the Budapest Festival Orchestra, which he founded with Hungarian pianist Zoltán Kocsi in 1983, in an evening of musical contrasts at the Usher Hall: Bach on period instruments, fulsome blazing Bartok, and a violin dance suite and concerto from Fischer himself, wryly encompassing both.

 Bach’s festive Orchestral Suite No. 4 in D, BWV 1069 adopts, extends and develops an earlier French court and operatic form, beginning with a stately overture characterised by dotted rhythms and proceeding to a series of dance sequences. In this case a Gavotte appears between a pair of Bourrées and a pair of Menuets, ending with a Réjouissance (‘rejoicing’) – evoking the fourth movement of Handel’s very different but equally celebratory ‘Water Music’.

 Fischer sat on a raised platform to conduct the conversation between strings, woodwind and brass in a work which is light in tone but full of rhythmic vitality, inventive textures and instrumental detail. Some of the higher accents are slightly lost for those in the stalls at the Usher Hall, but the 25 instrumentalists gave a well-balanced account of a work which ends with an achingly gorgeous menuet in the round, then a bright flourish.

 While a substantial re-setting of the stage took place for the larger, contemporary forces required by Fischer’s own Dance Suite for Violin and Orchestra, In Memoriam JS Bach, the conductor gave a gently humorous speech introducing the piece. Written in 2024, his suite follows Bach’s adaptation of earlier forms, with a prelude followed by movements comprising Bossa nova, Ragtime, Tango and Boogie-Woogie. It also doubles as a virtuosic violin concerto. Guy Braunstein impressively reprised his world premiere with the Scottish and UK ones.

 There are many layers of interest beneath Fischer’s boisterous suite. References to the Baroque and to the Hungarian folk traditions Bartok revered abound. There is devilish rhythmic play, colourful orchestration, a mini-trio of drums, double bass and violin, exquisite soloing from Braunstein, an opening walking theme on strings, woodwind and brass, a violin duet, and great variation of tone, texture and pace – all wrapped up in an infectious bounce some classical orchestras would struggle with. Not the Budapest Festival Orchestra, who swung with aplomb.

 The crowning event of the evening, however, was a wonderful, full-throttled performance of Bartok’s ballet The Miraculous Mandarin, Op. 19, Sz.73. While the tale (summarised on surtitles) is gruesome, the music is glorious. This was a committed performance. Fischer, who had sat for the intimacy of Bach and swayed for his own suite, launched himself and the orchestra into orbit for the thumping rhythms, outrageous chromaticisms and moments of nervous introspection that mark this masterwork.

 When it premiered one hundred years ago, The Miraculous Mandarin caused scandal with its dark narrative and abandoned, folk-inflected modernism. Today it can still ruffle ears accustomed to gentler fare. The BFO know every melodic nook and harmonic cranny of this extraordinary eleven-part score, and carried all before them in presenting as a glowering gift to the EIF.