Budapest Festival Orchestra took the audience around the world and back in time during their February 6 concert at Carnegie Hall. They also proved themselves capable of choral work, as they performed the Carnegie Hall premiere of the chorus version of Arvo Pärt’s Summa.

From the modernist and minimalist Estonian, Pärt, the orchestra went to the Russian Romantic, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsy, whose Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35 was declared “impossible to play” by Leopold Auer, the violinist for whom it was written. Although it would be the only violin concerto the composer ever wrote, it would eventually become a staple of the violin repertoire.

Budapest Festival Orchestra with Iván Fischer and Maxim Vengerov

The concert ended with the German Romantic, Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 2, a piece bursting with confident vitality while adhering to the classical sonata form. Although the symphony is considered the composer’s most lyrical and cheerful, and melodically brilliant, its premiere in 1877 had to be delayed because the orchestra was preoccupied with learning Richard Wagner’s Das Rheingold.

Music director and founder of the Budapest Festival orchestra, Iván Fischer, certainly took a risk when he turned his instrumentalists into choristers. But they acquitted themselves admirably. If they produced no pyrotechnics, their performance was polished and evocative. It certainly did justice to Pärt’s commitment to faith and the solace it brings.

Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra

Fischer took no risks with Soviet-Israeli violinist Maxim Vengerov, who began winning international acclaim when he was just ten. His blend of technical skill and emotional expression gives his playing lyrical depth and height. And he came back onstage for an encore bursting with folk motifs that set the audience into rhythmic clapping.

My personal favorite was the Brahm’s symphony, with its strains of the famous lullaby weaving in and out of the first movement, the melancholy adagio and its spirited finale. But taken as a whole, the evening clearly demonstrated why the Budapest Festival is considered the youngest of the world’s top-ranked orchestras.

photos by Chris Lee

Budapest Festival Orchestra
Carnegie Hall, 881 Seventh Avenue
reviewed on February 6, 2026