Pieter Wispelwey, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer Dvorak: Cello Concerto, Symphonic Variations (2007)

First there was rhythm - pulsing, driving, primal rhythm. And a new word in musical terminology: Barbaro. As with sticks on skins, so with hammers on strings. The piano as one of the percussion family, the piano among the percussion family. The first and second concertos were written to be performed that way. But the rhythm had shape and direction, myriad accents, myriad subtleties. An informed primitivism. A Baroque primitivism. Then came the folkloric inflections chipped from the music of time: the crude and misshapen suddenly finding a singing voice. Like the simple melody - perhaps a childhood recollection - that emerges from the dogged rhythm of the First Concerto's second movement. András Schiff plays it like a defining moment - the piano reinvented as a singing instrument. His "parlando" (conversational) style is very much in Bartók's own image. But it's the balance here between the honed and unhoned, the brawn and beauty, the elegance and wit of this astonishing music that make these readings special.

From the symphony to the song would seem to be an enormous step: from the largest form for the largest orchestra to the smallest form for the smallest ensemble. Gustav Mahler nonetheless brought them together and interwove them in previous symphonies as well as in ‘Das Lied von der Erde’. "The long, endlessly stretched crescendo on the single note "e" (filled with so much desire) leads to the final part of Abschied, which I can only describe with the word ‘cosmic’. The voice is surrounded by floating meteors, objects, particles or stars, which move in various directions and speeds. We have left the atmosphere and look back on the beautiful green and blue planet." - Iván Fischer, conductor

From the symphony to the song would seem to be an enormous step: from the largest form for the largest orchestra to the smallest form for the smallest ensemble. Gustav Mahler nonetheless brought them together and interwove them in previous symphonies as well as in ‘Das Lied von der Erde’. "The long, endlessly stretched crescendo on the single note "e" (filled with so much desire) leads to the final part of Abschied, which I can only describe with the word ‘cosmic’. The voice is surrounded by floating meteors, objects, particles or stars, which move in various directions and speeds. We have left the atmosphere and look back on the beautiful green and blue planet." - Iván Fischer

One might call this delightful collection “Richard Strauss in Hungary”, so obvious – and nourishing – is the German master’s influence on both composers. Bartok’s two early essays are, like Beethoven’s first published piano concertos, catalogued in reverse order – the ‘Op. 1’ Rhapsody having been composed after the ‘Op. 2’ Scherzo. Both combine Lisztian exuberance with a notably Straussian sound-palette.

Dvorák’s Violin Concerto has been undergoing a renaissance of sorts on disc, one that it entirely deserves. Its critics (starting with Joachim and Brahms) dismissed it for not adopting the usual sonata-form first movement structure, instead welding the truncated opening to the gorgeous slow movement. But really, how many violin concertos are there where you can really say that the best, most characterful and highly developed movement is the finale? And what could possibly be bad about that? Clearly Fischer and Suwanai understand where the music’s going: the performance gathers steam as it proceeds, and really cuts loose in that marvelous last movement. Suwani displays a characteristically polished technique and fine intonational ear (lending a lovely purity of utterance to the slow movement), but she’s not afraid to indulge in some “down and dirty” gypsy fiddling in the finale, or in the two Sarasate items that open the program.

So what if Liszt spent most of his life in France and Germany and never learned to speak Hungarian? The music of the Magyars' fiery favorite son played by a hot-blooded local boy is an irresistible combination. Even the delightful Dohnanyi filler (variations on ''Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star'') doesn't really douse the flames. Put it in the CD player and let 'er rip! Just be sure to remove all flammable vestments first. (Entertainment Weekly)

Absolutely yummy! Brahms orchestrated only a handful of his ever-popular Hungarian Dances. His friend Dvorák did a few more, and the rest exist in a variety of versions by a variety of arrangers. Conductor Iván Fischer has undertaken this job himself in several cases, with really impressive results. His solos and cadenzas for traditional instruments (Gypsy fiddle and cimbalom) sound perfectly idiomatic and tasteful, and his conducting manages to put some of the paprika back into the music without ever making it sound vulgar or mannered.

Neither too nationalist nor too internationalist, this 1995 recording of Béla Bartók's two violin concertos featuring Thomas Zehetmair with Ivan Fischer leading the Budapest Festival Orchestra is just right. Austrian-born Zehetmair has a fabulous technique, a warm but focused tone, and lively sense of rhythm, all of which make him an ideal Bartók player. His interpretations are less about showing off then about digging in, and his performances are more about the music than they are about the musician. Hungarian conductor Fischer and his Hungarian orchestra are not only up for the music in a technical sense, they are also down with the music in an emotional sense, and their accompaniments ground Zehetmair's coolly flamboyant performances. Captured in white-hot sound that is almost too vivid for its own good, these performances deserve to stand among the finest ever recorded.

Coupling the Hary Janos Suite with Kodaly ’ s two highly contrasted sets of Hungarian dances, urban and rural, is a time - honoured gambit, but Fischer has had the birght idea of adding some of the composer ’ s children ’ s choruses, and instrumental movements from the seldom - heard Hary Janos Singspiel that was the ultimate source for the perennially popular suite, in order to give a broader picture of Kodaly, both as musician and musical humorist. On the whole it works well: the Singspiel extracts are very slight, but the choruses are highly characteristic – and flawlessly sung by superbly disciplined childrens ’ choirs trained, inevitably, in the ‘ Kodaly Method ’. Nevertheless the three principal orchestral works remain the point for buying the disc, and these are very vivid, exciting interpretations. Fischer comes up against stiff competition in Antal Dorati ’ s classic 1973 recording of Hary and the dance - suites with the Philharmonia Hungarica. Dorati is ‘ straighter ’ in his readings of the pieces than Fischer, and the playing packs a tremendous punch: he also adds the Peacock Variations as coupling, and thus probably still remains the first choice.