BFO/Fischer

By the close of the Budapest Festival Orchestra's first concert under Iván Fischer, it was apparent that we have a terrific new violin virtuoso among us in the form of József Lendvay Jr. The classically trained Lendvay was sharing the platform with his father, József Lendvay Sr: one of the great Hungarian Gypsy violinists, and a regular player in the restaurants of Budapest, where the folk tradition is still gloriously alive.

The concert examined the impact of Gypsy music on classical composers. Brahms and Liszt, inevitably, were both prominent, though Gypsy music also reached the Second Viennese School via the concert's closing item, Schoenberg's orchestration of Brahms's First Piano Quartet, written "alla Zingarese" (in the Gypsies' style), as Brahms put it.

After kicking off with an enthralling improvisation from Lendvay Sr and cimbalom virtuoso Oszkár Ökrös, we heard Hungarian Rhapsodies and Dances by Liszt and Brahms alongside the folk melodies and playing that inspired them. Lendvay Jr, meanwhile, played Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen with a full, dark, sexy tone, breathtaking triple-stopping and pizzicatos as scary as gunshots. With his mane of black hair, he looks a bit like Paganini, one of whose Caprices he played as an encore. And it was to die for.

By the time Fischer and the BFO reached the end of their powerhouse performance of Schoenberg's Brahms orchestration, we were aware of how far we had come from Gypsy tradition, yet, paradoxically, how close it remained. Finally, the Lendvays returned to the stage and joined a trio of the BFO's string players for an improvisation that went on into the night.