The players of the Budapest Festival Orchestra filed on stage to our applause, to be followed by their founder and the concert’s conductor, Iv\u00e1n Fischer. We heard JS Bach’s Orchestral Suite No 4 played on instruments which were contemporary with those JS Bach would have known in about 1730. A perfect Baroque opener.<\/p>\n
Iv\u00e1n Fisher took to his microphone to tell us his players had to go and fetch their modern instruments and the stage slightly reset in preparation for a work he himself had written recently. Indeed it was to be the UK premiere. His Dance Suite for Violin and Orchestra mimicked the Bach we had just heard in format – but instead we were to hear Bassa nova, Ragtime, Tango and Boogie-woogie. It was Fischer’s in Memoriam to JS Bach.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On came the solo violinist, Guy Braunstein, and off they went in an intriguing exploration of a modern interpretation of music. Guy Braunstein certainly knew his stuff, and for a few moments was joined by his fellow front bench violinist. It was enjoyable but quite what JS Bach would have thought – Iv\u00e1n Fischer had assured us he would be listening somewhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Budapest Festival Orchestra has an undenial reputation for innovation and musical exellence under Fisher’s indefacticable leadership. After the break they played music for the ballet by fellow Hungarian B\u00e9la Bart\u00f3k which had initially, in 1926, been scandalous. The story line is pretty sordid but involves true passion. – but ultimately a horrid death. Whilst the Orchestra was playing the surtitles high over the players led us through the tale. At times the words were fast moving; blink and they had moved on. Bart\u00f3k’s music below and the storyline above together were spellbinding. This was a memorable concert.<\/p>\n
Event: Friday 8th August 2025 at 7.30pm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The players of the Budapest Festival Orchestra filed on stage to our applause, to be followed by their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,1102,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-331238","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-edinburgh","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-scotland","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115000329128299518","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}