Mendelssohn - Overture and Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night's Dream

(...) 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.

(...) 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.

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.

(...) 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. (...)

(…) 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. (…)

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

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

“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.”

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.

(...) 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. (...)

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

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.

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.

(...) 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.

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.

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.