New York Classical Review

“Sing it,” says the teacher to the budding young pianist, or violinist or bassoonist. She might mean, make your instrument sound like a human voice. Or she might be telling you to set down your instrument, take a breath, and croak out the melody yourself, just to find its natural shape.

There are music conservatories where all students are required to take voice lessons and/or sing in a choir, because the voice is where all music started. Perhaps some members of the Budapest Festival Orchestra attended one of those conservatories, because the ensemble led off its Carnegie Hall concert Friday night with Arvo Pärt’s Summa, not in the composer’s arrangement for string orchestra but in its original version for unaccompanied SATB chorus.

Summa is a setting of the Credo (“I believe”) section of the Latin Mass, which is typically set to assertive music. But in 1977, the Estonian composer was living in the atheistic Soviet Union; his Credo had to turn inward and become, as he said, his “most strict and enigmatic work,” a mandala for contemplation rather than a declaration.

Gathered downstage in front of their pushed-back chairs and music stands, the orchestra players may not have been highly trained singers, but their musicianship was beyond question as, for six minutes, they unfolded and refolded their vocal lines in Pärt’s “tintinnabuli” style, generating a clear yet silky choral sound under the modest gestures of music director Iván Fischer.

Thus the stage was set (after some moving of furniture) for the quiet opening of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, which only gradually raised its virtuoso colors in soloist Maxim Vengerov’s elegant interpretation. Which is not to say he didn’t make some impetuous moves in the early going, leaving contactor Fischer scrambling to keep up. But as the movement’s expressive arc emerged, soloist and orchestra meshed well, Fischer keeping his forces firmly in check so as not to cover Vengerov’s silver-toned elaborations; as a result, the few explosive orchestral tutti passages seemed to have even more “school’s out” energy than usual.

The inward-looking tone of the whole evening so far was affirmed in the concerto’s Canzonetta, with the orchestra responding sympathetically to the soloist’s chastely expressive song. The finale, however, shifted gears completely, as Vengerov led the orchestra on a merry chase, treating Tchaikovsky’s marking “vivacissimo” as synonymous with “prestissimo.”  Something was lost in this Olympic-level speed show, in terms of capping the expressive journey of the first two movements, but something was gained too: the sheer delight of flying fingers and bow, fired off with impeccable cool and more than a little wit.

As if to atone for such overt virtuosity, Vengerov returned to the stage and played a deeply serious encore, the Adagio from Violin Sonata No. 1 in G Minor, BWV 1001 by J.S. Bach.

Order thus restored, the orchestra returned after intermission for the calm, pastoral opening bars of Brahms’s Second Symphony, marred only by a persistent rhythmic issue: cheating the long notes, which threw the rocking three-to-a-bar slightly out of time. The stomping three of the energetic development section apparently brought more focus on the beat, as the recapitulation sounded more rhythmically secure than the first time around.

Brahms liked to hear his symphonies rendered by smaller orchestras, and these Budapesters, though fairly numerous, played with that small-orchestra feel: plangent winds, satiny strings, transparent textures and obviously listening to each other. But the sunniness of Brahms’s Second is enhanced by its shadowy corners, and one felt Fischer could have found more mystery in the first movement’s piano and pianissimo moments.

The literal meaning of Adagio non troppo is “not too at-ease,” which exactly describes the mood of this story-advancing movement, well captured by Fischer and his players. Cellos contended with woodwinds and brass in the opening bars, stormy and passionate interludes alternated with cloud-parting scenes of major-minor chiaroscuro, and even the major-key close resolved nothing.

The symphony paused here for a graceful diversion with a dainty oboe tune (obscured on Friday by loud woodwind neighbors) and a vigorous country dance, crisply delivered. Then the finale stole in with a pianissimo allegro theme that was the up-tempo cousin of the symphony’s opening measures, and much rejoicing ensued. A new major-minor theme muttered darkly in the development, but even this wet blanket joined the festivities in the movement’s exultant coda, all of it executed with transparent joy by Fischer and his jolly band.

For an encore, a violinist, a violist and a double bass player stepped in front of the orchestra and treated the audience to a medley of down-home Hungarian village dance tunes, each one faster and hotter than the last. The audience vacillated between clapping along and listening to the fiddle pyrotechnics, but had a high old time in either case.

The Budapest Festival Orchestra, conducted by Iván Fischer with mezzo-soprano Gerhild Romberger, performs Mahler’s Third Symphony, 8 p.m. Saturday. carnegiehall.org