Vicenza Opera Festival: Franz Schubert and the Music of the Austro-Hungarian Empire

Movements from a Schubert symphony and music from the peoples of the Austro-Hungarian Empire – Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra return to Vicenza with an unconventional concert. Schubert’s Symphony No. 5 is perhaps the Austrian composer’s most popular orchestral work from his youth. Its movements are interspersed with Transylvanian, Jewish and Serbian folk music, as well as Austrian, Czech and Hungarian folklore through Mozart, Dvořák and Liszt – performed by outstanding musicians of the orchestra and guest artists. Exciting folk rhythms mingle with classical forms, and visceral tunes with perfectly polished melodies. The sound of the orchestra alternates with cimbal, recorder, tambura and accordion, as well as the voices of the “wonderfully bright-toned and captivating” Olivia Vermeulen and the “light, floating-voiced” Mirella Hagen, while everything celebrates the joy of dance and life.

By 1812, Beethoven had completed eight of his symphonies, so it is hardly surprising that Schubert, who first turned to the genre in 1813, was strongly influenced by his predecessor. (As was everyone who intended to write a symphony after Beethoven.) Composed three years later, his Symphony No. 5 offers the first sign of his emergence from Beethoven’s shadow. The nineteen-year-old Schubert makes no attempt to compete, conform or imitate; he simply allows whatever comes to mind to flow from his pen. And this time, instead of Beethoven, he permits himself to take the styles of Haydn and Mozart as his models. The result is a symphony traditional in form yet infinitely light and airy – a refreshing contrast after the Symphony No. 4, nicknamed the “Tragic”. The work was written for relatively modest forces, particularly in the wind section.

The opening movement dispenses with any kind of slow, dramatic introduction, instead revealing its main theme almost immediately. The chromatic turns so characteristic of Schubert create at times unusual harmonies, at others a sense of constant motion. This is followed by a lyrical slow movement that occasionally expands into musical sighs. The G minor minuet – regarded by some as a tribute to Mozart and his G minor symphony – sounds almost like genuine dance music, a light-hearted play of rising up and coming back down to earth. The work concludes with an energetic and cheerful finale, optimistic in character and full of unexpected turns.

Before the Schubert movements, the concert opens with melodies from Bonchida in Transylvania. The authentic folk music, with its asymmetric rhythms, is performed by three members of the orchestra: István Kádár on violin, horn player András Szabó on viola and Zsolt Fejérvári on double bass. They are joined by cimbal player Jenő Lisztes, who has not only captivated audiences at Carnegie Hall and the Musikverein, and at the BBC Proms with the BFO, but has also worked with the legendary Hans Zimmer. Following the first movement of the symphony, clarinettist Ákos Ács offers a glimpse into the joyful side of klezmer, while after the second movement, the Eredics family, who have done much to preserve and promote South Slavic folk music, perform Serbian melodies.

After the interval, the second half opens with Mozart’s German dances, written in 1789. Mozart composed these pieces not for the concert hall but for a ball in Prague – in other words, for people actually to dance to. Here folk, popular and classical music meet, flowing naturally into another typical form of dance music, Schubert’s minuet. The dances are followed by duets: from Dvořák’s many works inspired by Moravian folk music, three duets are performed by two outstanding international singers.

The concert concludes with the most famous Hungarian Rhapsody, enhanced by the cimbal, the characteristic instrument of the urban Roma music that inspired Liszt. Like the other rhapsodies, the C-sharp minor work follows the dance structure of the csárdás: a serious, even dramatic lassan is followed by an energetic and virtuosic friska, or fast csárdás.