Stravinsky formed the focus of Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra’s Festival Hall visit, a pair of remarkable concerts exploring his output early and late. Both were structured around one of the ballets written for Diaghilev – Petrushka in the first concert, The Rite of Spring the next evening – preceded in each case by a work for soloist and orchestra (the Violin Concerto, the Capriccio for piano and orchestra) and a neoclassical piece from the 1930s or 40s (Jeu de Cartes, the Concerto in D for strings).
The Diaghilev ballets were both magnificently done, Petrushka in particular: this was one of the finest performances I’ve heard of it in London for some time. The central narrative, tragic yet ironic, was thrown into sharp relief by the cacophony of the Shrovetide fair, vivid in its whirling detail and verve. Petrushka’s shrieks of desire and despair combined pathos with grotesquerie, nowhere more so than at the close when his ghost confronts the Magician who has created and abused him. The Moor’s music had a heady sensuality, while the Ballerina’s flute and cornet solos were all flirtatious impertinence. The Rite of Spring was comparably powerful, edge-of-your-seat stuff, with great beauty amid the violence (the Mystic Circles of the Young Girls were simply ravishing) gradually accumulating tension as it went, rather than eruptive and seething from the outset.
