Tuesday evening (October 13th) gave Budapest audiences an opportunity to join the celebrations for the 350th anniversary of the birth of composer Henry Purcell. Purcell’s genius has long been recognized in his native England, but he has not always received the credit he deserves in mainland Europe. Anyone who saw the telecast of the Last Night of the Proms a few weeks back will remember Dido’s Lament, and if Purcell can reduce a rowdy audience in a vast hall on a fun night out to hushed silence, that is genius.
Great strides have been made in recent years in bringing pre-classical music back into the mainstream. Simon Standage has been a prominent figure in bringing authentic performance practice to centre stage over a good number of years now, and he presided over a concert which was fascinating and enjoyable. It is worth remembering, however, that almost every other performer on the platform was Hungarian. It is a great tribute to the level of musicianship in this country that so much variety of repertoire is performed with such authority.
The Great Hall of the Zeneakadémia has a warm and generous acoustic, which lends itself well to 18th and 19th century music but is less than ideal for Purcell and, if the sound seemed occasionally to be a little woolly, the performers were not at fault. The Ode “Love’s Goddess Sure Was Blind” worked well enough and was impeccably performed, but could have benefitted from brisker tempi in the quicker sections. It really came to life in the choral sections – the chorus were magnificent throughout – but it felt a little tame.
Purcell’s operatic masterpiece, “Dido and Aeneas” was an altogether crisper affair with finely judged tempi, brisk in the faster sections and thoroughly enjoyable. The famous lament has often been performed as a concert item in which the mezzo can milk it for all it is worth, but that does not work in context and the temptation was mercifully resisted here. Katalin Halmai was in good voice and proved a fine Dido. In fact, all the soloists were excellent, but soprano Mária Celeng and baritone Gyula Orendt were outstanding. The English text was rendered splendidly, although there was a faintly surreal sense of having slipped sideways into a cockney soap opera in the characterization of the witches, which was somewhat overplayed for some tastes. All in all, a thoroughly refreshing and enlivening performance.
The two major works were separated by four shorter chamber pieces which, in a way, encapsulated the whole evening. The sensitivity and sheer musicianship of the performers was manifest and it may be slightly churlish to be critical but the slower pieces (the Chaconne and the Pavanne, both in G minor) sounded a touch labored, while the Trio Sonata and Three Parts on a Ground fared much better. The suspicion remains that the venue had much more to do with this than the performers and was in any case not significant enough to cast a shadow over what was a well constructed program beautifully performed.