Music Review: Budapest Festival Orchestra

Published on Tuesday 26 August 2008 19:43

BUDAPEST FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA ***** USHER HALL

THE second of the Budapest Festival Orchestra's full orchestral performances in their four-day Edinburgh residency was a concert of two halves. In the first, a sort of musical equivalent of Hungary's famous Dobos torte multi-layer cake, Bartok and Dvork were piled up alternately on top of each other in an irresistible confection of Moravian, Romanian, Hungarian and Slovakian influence. With the Netherlands Youth Choir, an all-female group of just over 20 voices, the insight into the two composers' folk-rooted choral music was both delightful and fascinating.

Relishing language that to most English speakers is at least as impenetrable as their own Dutch, the choir sang with innocent charm as fresh and natural as the rustic scenes of which they told. By placing the two rows of singers immediately beside him, conductor Ivn Fischer bore no risk of losing very direct control, although the resultant fragmented orchestra was puzzlingly unconventional in its layout.

It was back to the usual set-up for Dvork's Symphony No 7. Building up to an all-guns-blazing finale, Fischer produced an expansive performance of passion and conviction with an apparent minimum of fuss from the podium.