Continuing the tradition, the Budapest Festival Orchestra will offer its audience a unique Christmas concert treat this December. The audience will get to assemble the programme that evening from a musical menu offering a broad selection of flavours. The Festival Orchestra may be the only symphony ensemble in the world whose musicians play orchestra pieces, contemporary and baroque chamber music, jazz as well as folk music (and who sing or even dance), and even can make music if necessary with just a couple of paint cans or thimbles! So, we’ll let you sort it out!
Iván Fischer Directs Verdi
In March 2018, Iván Fischer will leave the world-renowned series of Mozart operas behind and will stage Falstaff, the last opera by the brilliant Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi, his smiling farewell to the world. Over the past decades, many famous conductors have worked hard to retain this lyrical comedy within the operatic canon. Now, following in the footsteps of Toscanini, Karajan, Solti and Bernstein, Fischer has the same goal. The concert version of the piece will see the lead role performed by Nicola Alaimo, who has previously played the role at the Metropolitan Opera in New York as well as La Scala in Milan. No need for the audience to worry, however; we will not have to go the entire season without a Mozart opera. The orchestra will kick off the season with Don Giovanni, which international audiences have raved about for years.
Baroque Music, the Way You Never Heard it Before
Iván Fischer is drawn to all that falls outside of the routine, and will thus be presenting many unusual concepts this season: under his direction, the orchestra’s Baroque ensemble will join the programme for the symphony orchestra concerts. Several BFO concerts will begin with works by Johann Sebastian Bach played on Baroque instruments, so that the audience can experience the incredible difference in sound between the two. One such special event will see Romanian pianist Radu Lupu’s performance of Schumann’s single finished piano concert, conducted by Iván Fischer; Lupu, whose unparalleled voice has won multiple awards, will take the stage following a Bach suite.
We will not just bring you Baroque music at our symphony orchestra concerts, however. Conducted by Jonathan Cohen, our Baroque ensemble will perform two concerts, both invoking the atmosphere of the Mediterranean. In September, we offer you a Spanish-themed programme, to be followed by Italian vibes in February: energetic melodies spiced up with the voice of amazing Swedish soprano Malin Christensson await the audience that month. Jordi Savall’s July concert also promises to be an experience in Baroque music to cherish; Savall is a specialist in old music, is also a conductor and composer, and plays the gamba.
The concert series by one of the most highly skilled interpreters of Russian music is another one not to be missed: Shostakovich, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky, as only Dmitri Kitayenko would conduct them.
