If an orchestra is going to make its way to Los Angeles from Europe, the hope is you can find more than one appearance in our fair city. For Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra, they have three concerts at the Hollywood Bowl beginning tonight. With a quick side trip to New York in the middle of it all.
On tonight’s program is Beethoven’s Egmont Overture. Nicola Benedetti will perform the Bruch Violin Concerto. (Benedetti, by the way, just recorded Wynton Marsalis’s Violin Concerto which she played at the Hollywood Bowl in 2016.)
The second half of the program will feature Brahms’ Symphony Number 1.
The Budapest Festival Orchestra returns on Thursday, August 1st to perform Haydn’s Symphony Number 88. Soprano Jeanine De Bique will join the orchestra for a selection of arias by Handel.
The second half of this program will find the orchestra playing Dvořák’s Symphony Number 8.
On August 6th my favorite of the three programs is being performed. The evening opens with Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony (Number 41 – his last.) After intermission the composer’s Requiem will be performed. Joining the Budapest Festival Orchestra for the Requiem will be Jeanine De Bique, soprano; Kelley O’Connor, mezzo-soprano; Michael Schade, tenor; Adam Plachetka, bass and the Los Angeles Master Chorale.
Mozart’s Requiem is one of my favorite works and the opportunity to hear it outdoors makes this concert the highlight of all three performances by the Budapest Festival Orchestra.
For those in New York, the orchestra will make its way to the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center for a performance on August 4th. That program will feature the Haydn Symphony Number 88; the arias by Handel and Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony.
For tickets on July 30th at the Bowl go here.
For tickets on August 1st at the Bowl go here.
For tickets on August 4th at Lincoln Center go here.
For tickets on August 6th at the Bowl go here.
Photos of the Budapest Festival Orchestra and conductor Iván Fischer courtesy of the Budapest Festival Orchestra.