From Hungary with love: Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra glow in Brahms

If Mozart’s Don Giovanni is often regarded as a director’s graveyard, the same could be said of Brahms 3 and conductors. Of Brahms’ four symphonies, the Third is the hardest to pull off… or at least the easiest to foul up. It’s a passionate work, yet conductors can be tempted to overmilk the famous Poco allegretto third movement, and the fact that the outer movements, despite containing heroic moments of great vigour, both end on a subdued, quiet note can defeat all but the best. There is, in short, a temptation to tinker, to meddle where it’s least needed.

Not so Iván Fischer. With his Budapest Festival Orchestra, travelling up the Danube to Vienna's Konzerthaus, he conducted a heart-bursting rendition that was purposeful without being driven too hard, tender but maintaining the flow of the music; in short, trusting the score. Fischer’s gestures were gentle, inviting his players to collaborate, gently maintaining the beat with his lengthy baton; aggression was limited to the occasional clenched fist.

The playing glowed magnificently. Although relatively young (founded 1983), the Budapest Festival Orchestra has a distinctive, rich sound that stands comparison with its Viennese and Czech Philharmonic neighbours. Woodwinds blended harmoniously here and the brass, buried behind the strings on the lowest of risers, never obliterated. But it’s the spirit of their playing that was most touching, a sheer love of music-making, epitomised by white-haired Péter Szabó, leading the cellos affectionately, and Uxía Martínez Botana, digging vigorously into the score with her double bass colleagues, lined up along the rear of the platform.

Although in F major, the three chords that open the symphony belong to F minor – F–A flat–F – a variant on Brahms’s F-A-F motto, “Frei aber froh” (Free but happy), already setting up an…

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