Budapest Festival Orchestra

Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Antonin Dvorak – Symphonies Nos. 8 & 9 ‘From the New World’ (2010)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz  | Time – 01:18:18 minutes | 3,09 GB | Genre: Classical
Source: ISO SACD | © Channel Classics Records B.V. | Booklet, Front Cover

This pair of symphonies was written solely to satisfy Dvořák’s own poetic muse. In the keys of G major and its relative minor, E minor, they can be regarded as representing two sides of the same coin. The Eighth, composed in Dvořák’s summer residence at Vysoká deep in the Bohemian countryside, is indisputably “From the Old World” and rooted in Central Europe — “a work singing of the joy of green pastures, of summer evenings, of the melancholy of blue forests, of the defiant merry-making of the Czech peasants”, to quote the conductor Václav Talich, while the Ninth, composed in the claustrophobic surroundings of New York and intended as a greeting “From the New World”, is steeped in the composer’s “unappeasable yearning for his native soil”

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Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Antonin Dvorak – Slavonic Dances, Opp. 46 & 72 (2010)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 01:10:14 minutes | 2,78 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover | © Channel Classics Records B.V.

Whereas the first set had featured predominantly Czech dances (with the exception of the second which evoked the Ukranian dumka — not, strictly speaking, a dance), the second set is more broadly Slavonic, incorporating Slovak, Polish, Serbian and Russian elements in addition to Dvorák’s favourite melancholy dumka strains. In these sixteen highly varied and colourful dances, Dvorák had fulfilled his original brief to perfection, creating stylised, even idealised dance fantasias which inter – mingle folk elements with his own inspired melodies so effectively, so disarmingly and so artistically that for the most part they have defied attempts by musicologists to uncover the folk sources. Dvorák justified his approach in 1894:

‘From the rich stores of Slavonic folk music, in its Hungarian [i.e. Slovak], Russian, Bohemian and Polish varieties, the composers of the day have derived, and will continue to derive, much that is charming and novel in their music. Nor is there anything objectionable in this, for if the poet and painter base much of their best art on national legends, songs and traditions, why should not the musicians?’

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Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Mahler: Symphony No. 3 (2017)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82 MHz | Time – 1:35:46 minutes | 3,78 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover |  © Channel Classics

I love the whole symphony but from the second movement two favorite moments, two details, spring to mind. First, the recapitulation when the solo violin takes flight, like a buzzing bee around a flower, and then accidentally finds itself in a wonderful modulation to E major. The second is the ending. The flowers, that move and dance elegantly against the wind, suddenly expose their Tristan-like soul. From the vast first movement I would choose the huge, yawning creature’s (Pan’s?) first appearance. Conducting the Scherzo I am always carried away by the inserted episodes which interrupt the post horn — first by a group of baroque birds, then rococo ones flying up from the pages of a Mozart piano concerto. What an ingenious and unpredictable use of different styles! Finally, the endless melody of the last movement moves me every time with its intimate beauty and honesty. There is something divine in the wealth of this great masterpiece. – Ivn Fischer

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