Ivan Fischer and his Budapest Festival Orchestra open the Evian Musical Encounters in style

By inviting Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra to the inauguration of the Rencontres musicales d'Evian, Renaud Capuçon, artistic director of the event, which runs until July 5, made a strong impression. Indeed, the audience, with bated breath, followed Mahler's Fifth Symphony , a performance that will remain in their memories. First, there is the excellence of the Czech musicians. Colorful and incisive winds, sometimes mocking and organic, capable of covering an infinite spectrum of nuances, from classical to popular (never racy or vulgar) by way of klezmer. Round, deep, and sensual strings, silkily refined, remarkable for their homogeneous modeling and their commitment to the very bottom of the bow. And then there is Ivan Fischer's conducting.

The Hungarian conductor called for apocalyptic trumpets from the introduction of the Trauermarsch ("funeral march"), whose sharp and dramatic scansion tears through the space like a scream. A promise of the abyss barely softened by the entry of the strings, whose elegance without pathos moves with its restraint. Everything lives, and breathes, and moves, as if driven in a propulsion without return populated by glittering dissonances. Ivan Fischer's gestures are as sober as they are effective. A simple movement of the bust, a gaze fixed on the point from which the trajectory of a solo will spring forth, an arm raised to gather, and those supple movements of the left wrist sculpting the phrasing of a waltz. The osmosis between the man standing on the podium and his musicians, whose number seems to overflow the stage of La Grange au Lac without saturating the acoustics, is absolutely evident.

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