Concerto Budapest Symphony Orchestra
Usher Hall - 12/06/22
The last in the Sunday Classics 2022 series welcomed Concerto Budapest with their conductor, the violinist András Keller, and guest soloist Angela Hewitt, to the Usher Hall with a popular programme in the last performance venue of their UK tour. This ‘other’ CBSO hails from the Hungarian capital, not England’s second city, of course.
Bartók’s masterpiece is an unusual concert-opener, but few pieces can set out so unambiguously an orchestra’s credentials, with ample scope to display sectional virtuosity and playful musicality. This orchestra has a warmth and presence which matched the warm acoustic of the Usher Hall. The mysterious night-music opening seemed to grow organically from the silence. The Allegro Vivace was agile and characterful, the brass fugato section deserving of special mention for its musicality. I was struck by how this orchestra seems to exploit opportunities for chamber music making in even the most symphonic contexts – this must owe a lot to the conductor’s roots as a leading chamber musician. Notwithstanding the general agreement that Bartók’s published metronome marking for the second movement is too slow and a mistake, it did sound very fast to my ears. At first, this presented no problems to the ensemble, with the brass chorale in the middle of the movement again shining. However, the staccato wind writing at the end seemed to stumble, in a way that could perhaps have recovered with a less driven tempo. The elegiac night-music third movement was delivered with the utmost mastery. The Interrupted Intermezzo, where an idyllic Lehár quotation is interrupted by a parody of the ostinato from the first movement of Shostakovich’s 7th Symphony, complete with heckling from the brass and giggling from the winds, was as witty and irreverent as I have ever heard. The Presto was exciting and virtuosic, with the players leaving us in no doubt that Hungarian folk music is their music.
No programmes were on sale at the venue and none was available online, so many will have been surprised that the interval followed the Bartók.
Mozart’s A-major concerto, with its sunny outer movements and its slow movement in the rarely heard key of F#-minor (which, though seemingly remote, is merely the relative minor of A-major) met its ideal exponent in the radiant musical personality of the Canadian, Angela Hewitt. The orchestra was pared down to chamber ensemble proportions (just three desks of first violins, for example) and we were treated to an intimate performance of great elegance and beauty. Ms Hewitt’s flawless technique cannot escape mention, but it is the delicacy and subtlety of her phrasing that made this performance most memorable for me. The ensemble-playing was also of the highest quality. The aching pathos and melancholy of the winds’ and strings’ entry after the piano’s solo opening in the slow movement deserves special mention for its beauty.
Ms Hewitt played an encore: Scarlatti’s Sonata in E-major K.380. The same exquisite phrasing was in evidence. Repeated phrases were always differently coloured, whether by dynamics, a shift of stress or a hint of rubato, while the two hands sounded as if two virtuosi were on stage in conversation.
I was looking forward to the Beethoven, expecting one of the best-known works in the repertoire to benefit from a reading with the same flair that had characterised the other works. I regret to say I was disappointed. That the tempi were fast is undeniable, but not of itself problematic. But they were also metronomic and relentless and this, for me, robbed Beethoven’s most dramatic music of much of its contrasts and hence its drama. Where subtlety of phrasing could have allowed the music to breathe, it was driven forwards. The playing was very fine; all technical elements of Beethoven’s mastery were present, but the journey from darkness to light was on an express train. The Andante Con Moto was too much Moto and not enough Andante to breathe. I am bewildered to find the leader of the Keller Quartet, whose performances of late Beethoven have won acclaim, so out of sympathy with the composer’s most famous middle period work.
We were treated to two encores, two of Dvořák’s orchestrations of the Brahms’ Hungarian Dances, the famous No. 5 and the lesser-known No. 21. These were absolutely superb and full of the same flair and fun as had permeated the Bartók.
Overall, this was a memorable afternoon of great music-making, if partly challenged by a puzzling approach to one iconic work.