Migros-Culture-Percentage-Classics 180°

From a project orchestra for young talents to one of the best orchestras in the world - the Budapest Festival Orchestra has made this ascent at an impressive pace. Founded in 1983, the orchestra combines outstanding quality and a love of experimentation with international appeal. It is a regular guest at the festivals of Salzburg, Edinburgh, London, Lucerne, Bonn and Prague, and has been heard on the stages of North America as well as in Asia. His recordings of works by Mahler, Bartók and Mozart have received numerous awards, including two Grammys. Equally important to the Budapest Festival Orchestra is its "grassroots" work: it not only organizes its own music festival, the Bridging Europe Festival, but also has children's and discussion concerts on its program, and plays in bars and public squares.

Iván Fischer lives and breathes music: he composes, plays several instruments and enjoys a legendary reputation as a conductor. After studying in Budapest and Vienna, he worked as Harnoncourt's assistant in Salzburg before England discovered him: 1976 victory at the conducting competition in London, 1979 chief position at the Northern Sinfonia, 1982 world tour with the London Symphony Orchestra. Fischer then devoted himself increasingly to activities in his home country, in particular the establishment of the Budapest Festival Orchestra. Its triumphal march through the concert halls also brought Fischer international attention. In addition to guest conducting engagements in the USA and Great Britain, he took over the musical direction of the Berlin Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt. In 2006, he was awarded Hungary's highest honour for artists, the Kossuth Prize.

After three vocal symphonies, Gustav Mahler returned to purely instrumental music with his Fifth Symphony (1901/02). A step backwards? More like a new beginning! Although the classical four-movement scheme is still recognisable, it is expanded and heavily reshaped, turned inside out, as it were. The framework is formed by a sombre funeral march and a turbulent, increasingly over-excited finale, while the scherzo, of all things, becomes the central and longest movement of the symphony. In addition, there are numerous motivic connections between the movements, which weld the piece together into a large whole despite its playing time of 70 minutes.

Mahler's handling of the orchestra is also innovative, the independence of the individual voices taken to the extreme, with the help of which the compact tutti sound is repeatedly broken up. "The 5th is very, very difficult", Mahler warned and asked conductors willing to perform it to "rehearse it properly, otherwise we will experience something terrible".

It was the most inconspicuous section of the symphony, the Adagietto in 4th position, that became the most popular. Even before its use in Visconti's film "Death in Venice", it enjoyed great popularity and was often performed separately. The conductor and Mahler friend Willem Mengelberg attributed the rapturous tone of this piece for strings and harp to the composer's encounter with the young Alma Schindler: the Adagietto was Mahler's sonorous declaration of love to his future wife.