Listen: Budapest Festival Orchestra and Marc-André Hamelin Play Liszt

Iván Fischer leads the Budapest Festival Orchestra and pianist Marc-André Hamelin in Liszt's Piano Concert No. 1 at Carnegie Hall on Feb. 18, 2016.

Jeff Spurgeon: The following program was previously recorded. There are lots of ways to get to Carnegie Hall, the subway, a taxi, a walk down 57th street. You've just found another way to get to America's most famous home for classical music. Welcome to Carnegie Hall Live, the broadcast series that gives you a front-row seat for concerts by some of the greatest artists in the world, and you hear the performances exactly as they happen. You are part of the audience sharing the experience of music-making at Carnegie Hall.

On this broadcast, Iván Fischer and his Budapest Festival Orchestra play Weber's Der Freischütz Overture, the Symphony No. 5 of Prokofiev and with pianist, Marc-André Hamelin, Franz Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1. A concert of crowd-pleasers? True enough, but these words said something important when they were new, and they continue to offer rich rewards for listeners today. I'm Jeff Spurgeon. Joining me for this broadcast is the host of WYNC's soundcheck, John Schaefer. John, welcome back to Carnegie Hall Live.

John Schaefer: Glad to be here, Jeff.

Jeff: You have a special connection to Prokofiev's 5th Symphony, why is this piece so important to you?

John: A recording of this, I think was Eugene Ormandy in the Philadelphia Orchestra was the first LP of classical music I owned. A friend gave it to me at a time when I was just beginning to be interested in classical music and didn't know really what to listen for. How do you listen to this music? I resolved to listen to that Prokofiev's 5th every day until I had it figured out. It was my way in.

Jeff: In your way into classical music, that's great. Well, we're going to hear more from you about the power of Prokofiev during intermission. Right now, though, people are streaming into Carnegie Hall from the entrance on 57th street here in New York and moving into their red velvet seats to hear Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra play Weber and Liszt in the first half of this concert.

John: Now, Jeff, you're familiar with all the stories that we hear about struggling symphony orchestras.

Jeff: It's in headlines all the time.

John: It's so nice to have the Budapest Festival Orchestra here to give us a bit of a contrast because this orchestra is ranked among the best in the world. That's significant because most of the world's great orchestras, as you know, go back 100 years or more, the Budapest Festival Orchestra was founded less than 40 years ago in 1983. Now, not only is that significant, it's also ironic because the orchestra wasn't intended to last this long.

It was supposed to be a temporary ensemble of pickup bands to play at a festival, and a further irony, the festival never happened. This short-term orchestra didn't get to fulfill its original mission but has remained in existence making great music around the world for more than three decades. Actually, this concert is a celebration of the Budapest Festival Orchestra's 20th anniversary of their first appearance here at Carnegie Hall.

They are still led by the man who founded them the conductor, Iván Fischer, the orchestra was co-founded by the pianist, Zoltán Kocsis, as well, but Fischer is the man who's guided the orchestra from the start. When he realized that his little pickup band was actually going to stick around, he had to decide whether or not to change the name.

Iván Fischer: The question came up, "Should I keep the name festival or not?" Of course, it could confuse people because it implies that the Festival Orchestra is not a permanent orchestra. I thought it's great to confuse people about it because the word festival has another meaning that something is festive, that is not an every day, not an every week ritual, a concert.

This was the most important thing to me that despite that it's turned into a full-year operation, we never, ever fall into the routine of being an every day concert-giving orchestra, so let's keep the word festival in it.

John: Well, the festivities tonight begin with Carl Maria von Weber's popular Overture to his opera Der Freischütz. Now, this gives Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra a chance to indulge in something they've become known for, namely unusual placements of instruments. Iván Fischer told us about some of the positioning in the Weber piece.

Iván: There are two groups of horns giving signals and answering each other. When they sit in their normal position in the orchestra, you hear it, but you don't really understand the meaning of it. We will have the two horn groups on the two extreme sides of the orchestra, so you really have a perception that they would play to each other from two mountains or two hilltops, and this is what the music is about.

John: Jeff, we're watching on stage here at Carnegie Hall. Even without the musicians joining us yet, it's already a very unusual set up on stage.

Jeff: You can see that there are risers on both the left and the right side of the stage. We understand that the tuba is placed among the bases in the back of the orchestra. There's a lot of sound that's going to be flowing into the audience just because it doesn't have all of those other musicians in the way of those back desks.

[applause]

John: You hear the applause, which normally would welcome the appearance of the conductor on stage, but the Budapest Festival Orchestra does things euro style. This applause welcomes the members of the orchestra as they file from the two wings onto the stage here at Carnegie Hall. We'll begin with the Overture to Der Freischütz. Now, Jeff, this is a popular overture, but we never hear the opera behind it anymore.

Jeff: At least not much in this country, but it was a big deal when it was premiered in Berlin in 1821. This was unusual, this opera. It was not about gods and goddesses of myth, which was the subject of so many operas at the time. This opera was about real people, real German people, a prince, a forest ranger, hunters, a hermit, peasants. Weber's opera was a reassertion of German opera for a German audience.

John: At a time when Italian opera and especially the operas of Rossini were seen to be the pinnacle of the form, but also if you think about it, no Weber no Wagner because of the way he treats the orchestra.

Jeff: That's a fascinating piece. I think it's often overlooked when people survey Weber's music because he wanted the orchestra to do more than just accompany singers. He thought the orchestra could portray emotion and transmit a sense of atmosphere. He had a great subject to do it with because Der Freischütz is also a ghost story, and there's a huge ghost scene in the middle of the opera.

That's where Weber got to take his orchestration talents really to the top and heighten the drama that was happening on stage, and just as you say, that was what Wagner realized fully a generation after Weber did his work.

John: When we think about the Romantic music tradition, Romantic with a capital R, you can trace that back to the music of Carl Maria von Weber and two works like Der Freischütz.

[applause]

John: This set of applause is for the conductor, Iván Fischer, the founder and director of the Budapest Festival Orchestra.

Jeff: A warm applause from this Carnegie Hall audience. Weber's Der Freischütz Overture opens this concert by the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Iván Fischer from Carnegie Hall Live.

[music]

[applause]

Jeff: A performance of the Overture to Weber's Operah Der Freischütz by the Budapest Festival Orchestra conducted by Iván Fischer. The opening work on this concert coming to you from Carnegie Hall Live. Backstage, I'm Jeff Spurgeon, along with John Schaefer and the orchestra again being asked to stand up. Actually, Maestro Fisher is recognizing the horn section who played such a significant role in that work, and now the entire orchestra on its feet.

We're going to make a stage change before our second work on this program. Marc-André Hamelin will be the piano soloist to join the Budapest Festival Orchestra for Liszt Piano Concerto No.1, another very famous work which pricked up the ears of its first listeners as much as it has delighted subsequent listeners. Liszt was 43 years old and a world-famous artist when he played the piano at the premiere of this Concerto in 1855 with an orchestra conducted by Hector Berlioz.

Also, on that concert, by the way, was Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique.

John: Now, as you mentioned, Liszt was at the height of his fame at this point, but some of the ideas from this concerto date from his teenage years, so he was working on this for a long period of time. Of course, a piano concerto will have an important role for the piano. What most piano concertos don't have is an important role for the triangle.

I know this sounds like a sketch comedy routine from Saturday Night Live, but at the risk of invoking Ed Grimley, Martin Short's famous triangle solo, I do want to point out that there is a very important role for the triangle in the Liszt Piano Concerto, and it was a role that he himself had to defend from critics. Eduard Hanslick, the Viennese critic, panned the concerto and called it Liszt's Triangle Concerto.

Jeff: Not kind.

John: The concerto was not performed again for 12 years after that in the city of Vienna. Now, earlier today, Iván Fischer told us about the way that he stages the triangle player in this performance at Carnegie Hall.

Iván: One small thing I do in the Liszt which is really not an important change, but significant for us is that we put the triangle player right next to the soloist. Why? Because the triangle is a second soloist and he has a lot of little dialogues with the piano. Why does the triangle player need to be about, I don't know, a huge distance away where they don't hear each other, they don't feel each other's rhythm? I don't really know why to force the poor triangle players into the normal seating plan.

John: Well, in Liszt's day, I know there were some orchestras that either tried to hide the triangle player or did away with it entirely. It seems like you are saying no, Liszt meant this. This triangle is supposed to be there, it's supposed to be upfront in-your-face.

Iván: Well, one has to look at history also, for example, Liszt was elevated, this is what I read somewhere, a room and a high riser, and Liszt with his piano floating above the audience, a very romantic picture but I also read that in the same period, Paganini, for example, performed his violin concertos in theatres in a way that the orchestra was in the pit.

Jeff: On stage now, maestro Ivan Fischer and our soloist for this performance, Marc-André Hamelin. Oh, we should mention the other soloist, the triangle player, Laszlo Herboly. We're on stage now and ready to start this great Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 1 from Carnegie Hall Live.

[music]

[applause]

Jeff: You've just heard a performance of Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 1, so much of that concerto belongs to the pianist but the last two notes are the orchestra's alone. In this case, the Budapest Festival Orchestra and conductor Ivan Fischer, and those cheers for the soloist Marc-André Hamelin, and now, at Carnegie Hall, the entire Budapest Festival Orchestra on its feet at the maestro's command and a bow for everyone.

A significant work from maybe the greatest pianist of all time and a great composer for the instrument as well, Franz Liszt. Backstage at Carnegie Hall, I'm Jeff Spurgeon along with John Schaefer.

John: We neglected to mention Laszlo Herboly, the triangle soloist [chuckles].

Jeff: [chuckles] I suspect he'll get his own bow in a moment or two, but those cheers were once again for Marc-André Hamelin.

John: That performance raced by.

Jeff: Yes, it did.

John: It was just extraordinary.

Jeff: The voice you just heard in the background, triangle, that was maestro Fischer reminding us that Laszlo Herboly had a significant role in this performance [laughs].

John: I like when a conductor takes care of his players like that. He spots us broadcasting here just off stage, walks over and says,-

Jeff: Triangle.

John: - "Don't forget my triangle player."

[laughter]

John: Terrific. It is a remarkable piece. Jeff, you mentioned Liszt, a great writer for the piano, but an extraordinary orchestrator, a great writer for the orchestra as a composite instrument as well.

Jeff: Oh, absolutely.

John: You can--

Jeff: An Encore.

[music]

[silence]

[applause]

Jeff: Cheers from this Carnegie Hall audience for an encore by pianist Marc-André Hamelin.

John: A bit of a surprise.

Jeff: Yes, we weren't expecting that to quite honest. We'd been told that he wasn't going to do an encore, but by golly we got that extra treat on this broadcast from Carnegie Hall Live.

John: In a moment, we'll even find out what that was, but first, Marc-André Hamelin has to attend to a little more business out on stage with the audience here at Carnegie Hall tonight. They're still not quite ready to let him leave.

Jeff: As you hear. Beautiful decoration, ornamentation, and lots of the virtuosity for which Marc-André Hamelin is very famous. Backstage now, the maestros Fischer and Hamelin and a few words post-performance and a nice hug. We're very pleased to welcome to the Carnegie Hall Live microphones now, Marc-André Hamelin. Congratulations on that performance, sir.

Marc-André: Thank you so very much.

John: What was that performance?

Jeff: Yes, what was the encore?

Marc-André: It was a Liszt arrangement of one of Chopin's Polish songs, actually, it's called, My Joys.

Jeff: Beautifully done. That explains the Lisztian influence that we heard in it. It was Liszt?

Marc-André: Unmistakably, yes.

[laughter]

Jeff: You come back to a work like Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 1 and the challenges are there all over again.

Marc-André: Of course, and especially in this case, before this tour, I don't think I had played it for 10 or 12 years.

Jeff: What was it like to return to it?

Marc-André: Because of a great dissatisfaction with the way I was playing it back then upon listening to the last performance that I did, I thought, "This has to change completely." I had to rethink the piecing, and maestro Fischer definitely helped me in this regard because he really corroborated most of the instincts that I had in re-learning the piece. It was a very harmonious collaboration.

John: How did the collaboration begin?

Marc-André: You won't believe this. We did three concerts for this tour, the first one was in Washington DC, and our only rehearsal was the dress rehearsal.

[laughter]

John: Really?

Marc-André: Yes.

John: You recently did a recital here at Carnegie Hall and before you did that recital, you came downtown to our WQXR Studios and recorded one of your own pieces. Tell us a little bit about the Pavane Variée.

Marc-André: It was written because I had a commission from the ARD Competition in Munich to write a piece for semi-finalists to play. It's a piece that I had planned on a series of variations on this wonderful French Pavane which is actually rather well-known. I had intended it I think to be on a rather grand scale but when one starts these things, depending on the direction one takes, content dictates form.

John: Did the piece turn out the way that you thought it was going to? In other words, you probably discovered some things along the way as you were writing it.

Marc-André: I wrote a lot of material. Most of which I ended up discarding, but upon rewriting it or rethinking it, it became after a while pretty obvious in what direction it would take.

John: It's okay that you did that, by the way, because Liszt also spend a couple of decades working on the Concerto that you just played too so that was--

Marc-André: We're not aware how composers write things out of order and how they labor and revise and re-write and throw away.

Jeff: Marc-André Hamelin is the pianist and the composer. Congratulations on the performance on stage here tonight at Carnegie Hall.

Marc-André: Thank you very much.

John: Thank you for stopping by.

Marc-André: It was exhilerating.

Jeff: The Pavane Variée by Marc-André Hamelin recorded live in our WQXR Studios.

[music]

Jeff: A work called, Pavane Variée, performed and composed by our featured pianist, Marc-André Hamelin. The piece takes its theme from a Pavane by the 16th Century Frenchman [unintelligible 00:17:40]. Mr. Hamelin played that work in Carnegie Hall in 2016, but the performance you just heard came even before that and took place in a much smaller space, the studios at WQXR Radio in New York.

Yet to come from Carnegie Hall Live, the Symphony No. 5 of Prokofiev. Carnegie Hall :ive is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, on the web at arts.gov. Additional support is provided in part by the Howard Gillman Foundation and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council. This is Carnegie Hall Live.

[music]

Female Speaker 1: I am from Prague. Hungarian and Budapest is very similar so I felt that I will enjoy the Hungarian music.

Male Speaker 1: Well, they have a strong tradition of folk music.

Female Speaker 2: Oh wow, think about Dora [unintelligible 00:18:36] and all these, I don't know where they are. The traditional [unintelligible 00:18:41] Liszt all these together.

Male Speaker 2: I always think of Liszt when I think of Hungary.

Female Speaker 3: And of course, Ivan Fischer because we are originally from Hungary.

Male Speaker 3: Marc-André Hamelin, I get a chance to hear [unintelligible 00:18:53] composition by one of the great pianists of the day. In fact, it's a beautiful program, with the Weber Der Freischütz Overture, and the Piano Concerto, it's a beautiful program.

Female Speaker 4: Prokovia 5,-

Male Speaker 3: Great symphony.

Female Speaker 4: I always like to hear Prokovia 5.

Male Speaker 4: I love Prokovia, his rhythms. His rhythms and some of his harmony.

Male Speaker 4: I'm working in New York, I'm from Huston, and this is my first [unintelligible 00:19:13] at Carnegie Hall. I saw that they are playing a Prokovia Symphony so I thought, "I'll be at that.

Female Speaker 5: Prokovia.

Male Speaker 5: Just enjoy everything I've ever heard by him so far, usually piano music. I don't think I've heard any orchestra music before.

Male Speaker 6: This is actually my first serious orchestral concert.

Male Speaker 7: They are a first-class orchestra.

Male Speaker 8: I'm tired, you better keep me awake.

[laughter]

Jeff: I think we'll keep you awake. I think they'll do it. The voices of some of the concertgoers here for this Carnegie Hall performance and some of the reasons why they came. The orchestra, the maestro, the program, the piano soloist, and the work in the second half of this program, Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony. I'm Jeff Spurgeon, backstage at Carnegie Hall along with John Schaefer. We're getting ready for this Prokofiev work led by this very distinctive and important maestro in Hungary, Iván Fischer who's never shy about expressing his opinions.

The New Yorkers music critic Alex Ross has called Fischer a political gadfly.

John: Yes, and it was interesting how many of those voices we heard of concertgoers talking about Hungary and the Hungarian tradition. Well, Iván Fischer has had a lot to say about the state of Hungary these days. There's been an increasing rise in antisemitism, anti-Roma, anti-immigrant, antagonism. I asked him earlier today how he balances his own work where he's trying to lead an orchestra in this climate.

[music]

Iván: We had 70 years without war in Europe, which is unheard of. I don't remember any other 70 years in history of that continent, and people maybe forget the dangers and tensions rise again, nationalism rises again, and all kinds of things which could endanger this wonderful long, peaceful period. I think what music can do is to remind people how terrible things can be and how wonderful things can be so that it brings out to the good part of a human person.

I cannot imagine, for example, that if we would give a concert to refugees and people who don't like refugees, and they would sit together in a hall listening to Mozart, I think they would smile at each other at the end of the concert.

John: Have you been able to try that?

Iván: Yes, I do this all the time in Berlin and Budapest, we invite refugees to the concerts and integrate them in the society.

John: I've spoken to your countrymen Andras Schiff on a number of occasions, and he will not set foot back in Hungary while the Orban regime is in place, and the country seems to have skewed to the right towards an authoritarian cast. You still live and work in Hungary. Do you feel you're more effective fighting from within than from without?

Iván: Yes, because I'm responsible for an orchestra and I'm responsible for subscribers, many thousand people for whom our concerts are highly important spiritual, elevating experiences, and I don't want to leave them behind and I feel responsible for them. It's important to me that I always say what I feel, that I don't hide my thoughts and feelings, but simply leaving would not feel right.

Jeff: That is conductor and founder of the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer, a major player on the Hungarian cultural scene, and getting ready to conduct the final work on this program, which is by Sergei Prokofiev. Now, that is also a piece from difficult times it was written in 1944, as it was becoming apparent that the Soviet Union would eventually defeat the Nazi forces.

It's a wartime work, but it has transcended its point of origin and become a popular piece in the orchestral repertoire and Iván Fischer says, "Knowing its place in history is an important part of understanding Prokofiev's point of view."

[music]

Iván: I think the fact that it was written at the end of the war is very important, especially there in Russia at that time the Soviet Union is 20 million people who were killed in the war. We cannot imagine the life, the misery, the unbelievable hardship people had, and in those circumstances, Prokofiev sitting at the desk and writing the Symphony, I cannot separate the environment from the piece and I hear it all the time.

There are various impulses, which I can immediately hear when it was written. It can be something bombastic and rough. It can be in the next moment, an incredible fragile dream and it can be the wonderful optimism of starting a new life on the ruins.

John: I think that sense of optimism is what sets this apart from say, some of the Shostakovich wartime symphonies or the Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima by Penderecki, other pieces about war. This one has a kind of optimistic, almost a transcendent quality to it.

Iván: Yes, it does, absolutely, but it doesn't have a program at all. It never describes facts, but it describes moods and feelings which I think are not separable from the environment and the optimism is a very important thing that after such a catastrophe like the Second World War in the Soviet Union, this feeling of let's get out of it, keep on living, start a new life is absolutely audible in this symphony.

Jeff: Maestro Iván Fischer talking about the Prokofiev Symphony No. 5 that he is about to conduct with the Budapest Festival Orchestra. I'm Jeff Spurgeon backstage at Carnegie Hall with John Schaefer and a number of members of the Budapest Festival Orchestra. That's the-

John: The din you hear in the background.

Jeff: -din in the background. The stage doors are closed. Now, John, at the beginning of this broadcast, we talked about the fact that this is an important Symphony for you as a point into classical music. Can you talk about what you went through in listening to the Ormandy recording of this Symphony?

John: I did not know anything about the wartime context in which it was written, it was a record.

Jeff: It was just a record but by an orchestra.

John: I was trying to figure out what are people hearing in classical symphonies, how do they follow the way themes are developed. In retrospect, I'm not sure I would suggest the Prokofiev fifth as a first.

Jeff: As a starter.

[laughter]

Jeff: Well, you are a person of great musical capacity and so it was a good choice for you.

John: The more technically inclined you are as a listener, the more there is to mine here, for example, very early on in the piece in the second theme, there is a double sharp, an F double sharp, something I had never seen bef-- I sort of knew that, in theory,-

Jeff: You could do that.

John: -this thing was possible, but didn't quite understand why. If it's an F double sharp, why not just make it a G, but in the context of this theme it is an F double sharp, and you don't have to get that technical with it, fortunately, because the way the two opening themes of the first movement are kind of exposed and developed and woven together as the movement goes on, eventually, that was what drew me in as, "Oh, now I get it."

That took a little bit of doing, as I say, in retrospect if I were trying to get someone involved in classical music, I might pick an easier piece the César Franck Symphony in D, for example, maybe that Lizst Piano Concerto where you can follow the theme quite easily.

Jeff: Or the Prokofiev first, which was a pastiche of the classical Symphony of earlier styles, but the orchestration is so distinctively Prokofiev. If you know any of his other works, Peter and the Wolf, surely his most popular piece, you're going to understand that you're listening to Prokofiev, again, in this symphony, which Prokofiev wrote in about a month in the summer of 1944, and then it was premiered in 1945 early in that year, and later that same year it came to the United States.

This was at the end of World War Two so there was a lot of US-Soviet cooperation at that time.

John: Let's remember Shostakovich had been on the cover of Time Magazine, and Soviet composers were superstars back home but they were also a big deal here in the States in those days.

Jeff: After that US premiere of this symphony, Prokofiev got to be on the cover of Time Magazine too, the United States and the Soviet Union were on the same team. The world has changed a little bit since then.

John: Now this team is back out on stage at Carnegie Hall. It's the Budapest Festival Orchestra, their founding music director Iván Fischer now striding past us and onto center stage to conduct this performance of Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5.

[applause]

John: From Carnegie Hall Live and getting a boisterous round of applause from the audience here at Carnegie Hall tonight.

[music]

[applause]

Jeff: "A hymn to free and happy Man, to his mighty powers, his pure and noble spirit." The words of Prokofiev about the work that you have just heard performed. Prokofiev Symphony No. 5, the performers, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, and their founding music director, Iván Fischer. In a broadcast that comes to you from Carnegie Hall Live. Backstage I'm Jeff Spurgeon alongside John Schaefer.

The maestro himself just came on stage spun around once and now you hear the cheers for him and his ensemble. Everyone's on their feet, the maestro on the podium bowing to the house.

John: What a great program from a conductor who told us he doesn't like routine. Here's on paper, a very routine concert an overture, a concerto, a symphony, and yet in the performance something quite dramatic and quite different.

Jeff: Now back on stage once again, maestro Iván Fischer with the Budapest Festival Orchestra.

John: So satisfactory, in fact, that nobody seems to be in any hurry to vacate the premises, the ensemble is still out there on stage.

Jeff: The house is still dark too.

John: Iván Fischer back on the podium and facing the audience and waving to the audience. Once again, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, a group that was founded for a festival that never happened.

Jeff: [chuckles] A pickup band that's picked up and kept going.

John: Now they're sitting back down. Let's see what happens next here on stage at Carnegie Hall.

Iván: Thank you. We'll sing something for you and I tell you why we do this, because we want to encourage everybody to sing.

[laughter]

Iván: It is not to impress anybody, but to encourage everybody that one can overcome their fears even if you are not a singer.

[laughter]

Iván: Now staying in Russia, we will perform an old Russian church song originally from the fifth century in a 19th adaptation by a Russian Orthodox Church conductor.

[music]

[applause]

Jeff: An audience deeply touched, a vocal performance by a symphony orchestra. I wonder if that's ever happened before at Carnegie Hall.

John: I don't know. Iván Fischer told the audience, "We're not doing this to impress you." Having said that, I was duly impressed.

[laughter]

John: An ancient bit of Russian Orthodox liturgical chant, as Iván Fischer told us, a 19th-century arrangement, four-part harmony, soprano, alto, tenor, bass, sung by the members of the multitalented Budapest Festival Orchestra and another chorus of bravo's and applause from the audience here at Carnegie Hall tonight.

Jeff: We learned something about the orchestra in that performance, too. You heard lots of women's voices and lots of young voices. That was really a touching moment and I loved what Iván Fischer said, too, "We encourage you to sing and to overcome your fears of singing." I have to believe that based on the conversation that you had with the maestro earlier today that we shared during intermission, he is speaking about more than music.

John: Yes. The idea of being active, being involved, music as a social act. Music as a communal binding act, very, very important.

Jeff: Having the courage to speak out about what's important.

John: We covered a lot of ground.

Jeff: Indeed, and beautifully so. That concludes our live broadcast from Carnegie Hall with the Budapest Festival Orchestra.

[music]

Jeff: Carnegie Hall Live is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts on the web@arts.gov. Additional support is provided in part by the Howard Gilman Foundation and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council. Our thanks to Clive Gillinson and the staff of Carnegie Hall, WQXR's recording engineers are Edward Haber, George Wellington, Noriko Okabe, Duke Marcos, and Damon Whitmore. Our radio producers are Eileen Dillahunty and Aaron Dalton, WQXR's project manager is Christine Herskovits. Carnegie Hall Live is a production of WQXR in New York.

 

Copyright © 2020 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.