Heroic, but Not Always Bravura, Beethoven at Bowl

The Budapest Festival Orchestra likes to think of itself in fairly heroic terms, and why not? Organized by conductor Ivan Fischer and pianist Zoltan Kocsis just 15 years ago, and only full time since 1992, it already has the reputation as the finest orchestra in Hungary, and one that the rest of the world has noticed through recordings and tours. It is an inspiring success.

And heroic it couldn’t have helped but sound Tuesday, when it opened its week at the Hollywood Bowl. The orchestra announced itself with three of the masterpieces that an intrepid Beethoven wrote to establish himself in Vienna at the beginning of the 19th century. The Third Piano Concerto, the Third (“Eroica”) Symphony and the third of his overtures to “Leonora” (which, in revision, became “Fidelio”) represent the onset of Beethoven’s middle period, which is also known as his heroic period.

Although all are old favorites at the Bowl, the three pieces together make for an unusually cohesive, single-minded--relentless, even--program. They were composed within a short period of time. The Third Concerto, written between 1800 and 1802, is often considered Beethoven’s first masterpiece. The “Eroica” Symphony, from 1803, is Beethoven’s first great symphony and his first really large-scale revolutionary score. The overture, composed three years later, comes from Beethoven’s attempt to do something just as heroic with opera.

If there is such a thing as making a political statement in music, it is with these pieces that it began. It is also with these three pieces that a composer, for the first time, was able to use music as the device through which a gigantic ego could command the world stage. This is the first music to influence public opinion; it made possible Wagner, Shostakovich, the Beatles.

There was, consequently, no small ego involved in the Budapest Festival Orchestra choosing these works to introduce its residency--with five different programs scheduled over six nights, it clearly felt that even its bread-and-butter Bartok and Liszt could wait a night or two. But this is a Hungarian orchestra through and through, even in Beethoven. A look down the roster of players reveals nearly all Hungarian names. A few seconds of listening reveals a special timbre.

Fischer emphasizes the strings, and the Budapest strings are a striking lot. Seating them in the old European style, with the basses across the back stage and the violins divided on either side of the conductor, he seems to build the entire orchestral sound, from bottom to top, from them. Phrases begin with combustible attacks from the bows. The off-beat accents in Beethoven, the first sign of the composer’s commanding contrariness, are electric when they are played by these fiddlers. When fast, they play very fast, with Gypsy fire. When slow, they play very slow, with soul. The winds and sometimes brash brass serve more for color.

Having built it from scratch, Fischer clearly is the architect of this particular sonority, which runs hot and hot, although his approach to Beethoven is more hot and cold. The intensity, especially in the first and third movements of the symphony and everywhere in the overture, could be riveting. Slow movements, especially the “Eroica” funeral march, also displayed their own rapt intensity, but Fischer has not, at least not yet, mastered Bernstein’s trick of conducting slow music at a snail’s pace and still maintaining momentum. When Beethoven becomes still, Fischer made the music sound stunned, like a deer caught in headlights.

That was the greatest problem in the concerto, for which Peter Frankl was soloist. Frankl’s playing was aristocratic, graceful, elegant, deliberate. Especially deliberate. For a while it was pleasure to encounter such clean playing, such well-considered phrasing, such a fine, Old World manner. The C-minor Concerto contains the most beautiful slow movement Beethoven had yet written (or would write for some years), and Frankl knows it. But it is hard to make music sound heroic when such great care is taken with every moment. The performance went on for a very long time. Fischer had the orchestra bide its time, the hero resting, saving strength for the “Eroica.”

* The Budapest Festival Orchestra, Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., through Sunday, with four more programs. $1-$98. (323) 850-2000.