Mendelssohn – Overture and Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Budapest Festival Orchestra

16,9934,49
(16 press reviews)
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Original Recording Format: DSD 64
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No doubt fairies exist. Mendelssohn spoke their language well. When he considered composing music to Shakespeare’s play, he decided to focus on the scenes with fairies.
Humans like this music. It entertains them. They are allowed to listen to this cd, too. However, we made this recording for fairies. They listen differently. This recording is full of hidden messages, which they will understand.
Fairies are around us all the time. They occasionally interfere but sometimes they take a long time waiting for the right moment. If you keep your voice down and open your eyes, you will notice them. They listen to this music with more attention.
– Iván Fischer

Tracklist

Please note that the below previews are loaded as 44.1 kHz / 16 bit.
1.
Overture
13:49
2.
Scherzo
04:33
3.
allegro vivace
01:35
4.
Song with choir
04:24
5.
Intermezzo
03:23
6.
Notturno
06:05
7.
Wedding March
05:24
8.
funeral March
01:32
9.
Dance of the clowns
01:50
10.
Finale
05:17
11.
May Night opus 9 no. 6
02:25
12.
Distance opus 9 no. 2
02:58
13.
Gondola Song opus 1 no. 6
03:13

Total time: 00:56:28

Additional information

Label

SKU

37418

Qualities

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Channels

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Artists

Composers

Genres

,

Cables

van den Hul

Digital Converters

Grimm A/D

Editing Software

Pyramix

Mastering Engineer

The recording was originally digitized using the Grimm AD1, which operates at DSD64. The original session tracks were edited and rebalanced (which meant going through the mixer)  in the only available format for that purpose; the Pyramix 352.8KHz/24bit PCM (DXD). Prior to the advent of direct digital delivery, the next step in the production process from 352.8KHz/24bit PCM would be the DSD64 edited master for SACD production. What we have done now is also make a direct conversion to DSD128 and DSD256 from that original DXD edited master, without going through any interim processing steps.

Those DXD to DSD conversions are not up-samplings, as they would be going from one PCM sampling rate to another, for they are different encoding systems. PCM is a digital value sample based system, and DSD is a digital bit density modulated system. Conversion from any PCM sample rate to any DSD bit rate system is a remodulation, not an up-sampling.

We feel there is an audio advantage to this process in using the original files so we give you the choice and you can decide.

Jared Sacks

Mastering Room

Grimm LS1

Microphones

Bruel & Kyaer

Mixing Board

Rens Heijnis custom made

Awards

Conductors

Instruments

,

Original Recording Format

Producer

Hein Dekker

Recording Engineer

Hein Dekker, Jared Sacks

Recording location

Budapest Hungary

Recording Software

Merging

Recording Type & Bit Rate

64fs

Release DateJune 1, 2018

Press reviews

HRAudio.net

(…) Fischer brilliantly conveys the magical world of fairies in the opening bars of the ‘Overture’, thanks to the superb playing of his crack Budapest Festival Orchestra. The immaculate wind chords and ethereal string textures are testament to the remarkable quality of this orchestra displayed throughout this recording. (…) It need hardly be stated that the recording (DSD 5.0) from engineers Jared Sacks and Hein Dekker made in the Palace of Arts, Budapest is in Channel Classic’ usual house style, beyond reproach.

Classica 4 out of 5

(…) À défaut de pouvoir plaire à tout le monde, la lecture d’Ivan Fischer et ses musiciens donnera du baume au cœur à ceux qui déplorent la standardisation, réelle ou supposée, des orchestres symphoniques : depuis sa création en 1983, la phalange hongroise n’a de cesse d’être façonnée dans la tradition de la Mitteleuropa au risque de partis pris contestables. (…) La prise de son bien définie permet une restitution optimale des parties chorales et solistes.

WQXR

The Best Classical Albums of 2018
Iván Fischer again demonstrates why his Budapest Festival Orchestra is one of the world’s best, performing Mendelssohn’s will-o’-the-wisp masterpiece with shimmering delicacy, agility and precision.

Telerama.fr 4 out of 5

(…) Clarté des plans sonores, cordes dansantes ou frissonnantes, délicatesse et inventivité des solos instrumentaux (comme cette clarinette aigre-douce, dont l’esprit klezmer colore la Marche funèbre), vivacité des tempos, chaleur et générosité du son constituent autant d’ingrédients essentiels pour que le sortilège agisse et déploie tous ses effets. (…)

Classical Candor

(…) Fischer’s way with the music is gentle and affectionate, almost consistently keeping it as light and airy as it should be. (…) warm and smooth and reverberant and easily listenable. (…)

BBC Music Magazine [4 Stars] 4 out of 5

Ivan Fischer is alive to the magical atmosphere of Felix Mendelssohn’s score (…) The playing throughout is of the highest quality. (…)

Het Parool

(…) Dirigent Iván Fischer heeft met zijn veelgeprezen Boedapest Festival Orkest een prachtuitvoering gemaakt (…) Ze spelen het allemaal schitterend. (…)

Classic FM [Album of the Week]

“It’s a fresh take on established classics this week, as the incomparable Iván Fischer and his beloved Budapest Festival Orchestra have at some of Mendelssohn’s finest works. In amongst the incidental music and overture to A Midsummer Nights Dream you’ll find numerous corners of interest, orchestral detail that you’d perhaps forgotten over the years – what a pleasure it is to rediscover it now.”

Classic FM – Album of the Week!

It’s the sign of an outstanding conductor if he can make you hear familiar music in a different way (…) Ivan Fischer‘s account of the celebrated Overture, composed when Mendelssohn was only 16, is full of delightful touches, like the braying of the asses, which has never before made me smile so much.

BBC Radio 3 [Disc of the Week]

(…) a characterful, colourful account. Mendelssohn’s fairies have their wings in the air as they should but a few of them have their feet on the ground. There’s a rustic edge to the music making which I find very attractive. (…)

Audiophile Audition 5 out of 5

(…) a conscientious, joyous reading that delights in Bottom’s donkey effects, a drunken Funeral March, effervescent textures, and light graciousness of heart. (…)

Presto Classical [Editor’s Choice]

This Budapest Dream is a far more raucous and rustic affair than John Eliot Gardiner’s recent plush pastoral idyll with the LSO: it’s as if even Fischer’s fairies have dirt under their fingernails, and the spirit of Shakespeare’s ‘rude mechanicals’ is never far away. The horns and bassoons have an almost Mahlerian quality in the Nocturne, and likewise the tiny parodic funeral-march (incidental-music-within-incidental-music for Pyramus and Thisbe) wouldn’t be out of place in a Mahler symphony.

The Guardian

Fischer and his Budapest forces cast a spell with A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Midsummer fever is all around: Radio 3 recently took itself off Into the Forest for a week, including al fresco breakfasts with the gregarious Petroc Trelawny, documentaries and atmospheric, forest-inspired In Tune Mixtapes. Meanwhile the Budapest Festival Orchestra, under its ever original music director, Iván Fischer, released an album for fairies. “They listen differently,” he writes. “This recording is full of hidden messages which they will understand.”

Fortunately this gloriously atmospheric account of Mendelssohn’s incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Channel Classics) is also for humans (“they are allowed to listen to this album too”). It’s always been a favorite work of Fischer’s, and the depth he brings to this youthful marvel – starting with the Overture the precocious Mendelssohn wrote at the age of 17 – is made out of precisely characterised instrumental colours and perfect shaping of the lines. Transparent fairy wind chords, scuttling high strings, braying portamentos and then the edging in of the final wistful string melody – all are incomparably lovely.

The drama continues in the later added movements: a truly impassioned, fast Intermezzo, a bucolic but exact Scherzo, a (deliberately?) stolid Wedding March, a Gypsy clarinet in the rarely heard Funeral March, and the crisply sung vocal numbers with Anna Lucia Richter – who aptly adds a bonus of three fine songs by Mendelssohn’s sister, Fanny. Surely a disc of the year.

De Gelderlander

(…) sprankelende ouverture die nu weer vederlicht, dan weer stoer klinkt (…) Aan energie ontbreekt het hier niet. (…) Kleurrijk en perfect qua frasering en timing. (…) Aantrekkelijk is tenslotte de gekozen repertoireaanvulling: een drietal liederen van Fanny Mendelssohn. Die kom je immers niet zo vaak tegen en dat is jammer. Zeker in het geval van zo’n Gondellied, hier hartveroverend onder de aandacht gebracht door Anna Lucia Richter.

Opus Klassiek

Het gehele ensemble weet bovendien de sprookjessfeer uitstekend op te roepen en daar is het de componist uiteindelijk om begonnen. Bovendien: als het om ritmische precisie en dynamische nuancering gaat kun je Fischer wel om een boodschap sturen. Afgaande op de cover had hij er ook echt zin in. (…) een luisterfeest dat nog een extra dimensie krijgt als u over een surround-opstelling beschikt. (…) Fanny Mendelssohns drie voor orkest gezette liederen (op teksten van Hölty, Tieck en Geibel) vormen een welkome aanvulling. De uitvoering is eveneens top, terwijl we deze liederen helaas maar zelden horen.

The Sunday Times

I used to say that Mendelssohn never managed to recapture his teenage overture’s freshness when he returned to Shakespeare’s play 16 years later. Hearing this lovely performance, I realise that’s rubbish. Fischer’s wonderful orchestra works as if everyone revels in what they are doing.

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