When I listen to a piece of music and it gets into my head, it tends to stay there until dislodged by some other piece I hear. Last week the Mezzo channel showed George Enescuʼs Romanian Rhapsody Nr. 2 and itʼs been with me ever since (no music to listen to in the hospital). What struck me about this very familiar piece was that the conductor, Ivan Fischer, was unusually attentive to the score. Yes, there are plenty of changes in tempo, but I have seen conductors lead their orchestras in Stravinskyʼs “Firebird” without score, and he is far more complex than Enescu.
The reason, I suspect, has little to do with the musicʼs complexity and more with its unfamiliarity. And why should the Enescu be unfamiliar? Because Fisher was leading the Budapest Festival Orchestra. Hungary used to be a much larger country than it is now, and a good deal of the territory it lost went to Romania. Itʼs been more than 70 years since the end of WW 2, but I wager this is one of the rare times a Budapest orchestra has played a Romanian Rhapsody, made up of orchestrated folk tunes and native dances.
Thatʼs how long it can take for wounds between neighboring countries to heal.
hamiltonbeck 