Few works of Baroque music are played or recorded more often than Johann Sebastian Bach's six Brandenburg Concertos. The second part of the BFO's season-long Bach series is the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, in which the strings take the leading role. Using period instruments, their Baroque ensemble will present this work that Bach himself probably never got to hear played.
Béla Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta is of similarly particular importance to the string players. One of the most original masterpieces of the 20th century, it is a work that Iván Fischer feels the BFO plays better than anyone else in the world, since they "speak Bartók's musical language as their own mother tongue”. In spite of the fact that it includes a great many innovations in terms of both rhythm and the string playing, the conductor says the work is nevertheless "a bit Baroque” owing to its configuration of two small orchestras set face to face with each other, which makes it easy to relate to the Brandenburg Concerto.
Of the four symphonies written by Johannes Brahms, the third is the shortest. Music critic Eduard Hanslick also considered this work that Brahms composed as a "free but happy” 50-year-old bachelor to be the most perfect of the four. Lyrical, passionate and mysterious, it serves as a transition between the bright and cheerful Symphony No. 2 and the sombre Fourth Symphony.


Presented by: Budapest Festival Orchestra