The Romeo and Juliet Dramatic Symphony: I don't know if I've ever heard a live performance. Berlioz was an honourable revolutionary artist, he wrote difficult things for orchestra which exceeded the capacities of 19th century ensembles. Little wonder that he experienced more failure and indifference than success. He would have been 200 this year – true, only in December. As a taste of things to comes, The Spring Festival programmed – and how well it did – Romeo and Juliet, which is neither opera, nor oratario, nor cantata. But despite its title, is not a symphony, at least, not in the sense of Beethoven, Schubert or Mendelssohn. But concerning poetic magic, in Zoltán Kocsis's reading, of that there is no question. (I am not stubbornly repeating the term “reading” by accident or arbitrarily: in the musical chatter of our times, people increasingly attribute a magic or at least a mystic power to the knowledge of musical writing and reading, independently of whether someone possesses it, and they attribute it to very different degrees and standards.)

Kocsis, I cannot take his away from him, is in prodigious possession of the skill of score reading and interpreting. Regarding the entirety of what a work has to say, it was absolutely evident that the creation of dramatic compression was the orchestra, its personal reflexes the three soloists, while the choir was the commentators on the story, sometimes as confessional psalmists, others as the voice of the community.

Following the surgical intervention of the music director, I have heard opinions expressed that blind fear and Prussian drill now directs the playing of the National Philharmonic Orchestra. I myself do not believe this, following the unexpected transformation that has come like a meteor, although I would not think of a burst appendix that one would celebrate joyously following the operation.

Anyone now hearing the Berlioz, can welcome, along with the orchestra and its director, the elegant confidence of the sound, the production of the strings with their total technical security and flexibility and yet so sensitive for the many instrumental effects. Also the easy  but meaningful virtuosity of the woodwind, the liberated fluid phrasing in the prologues to the four  movements, or the ball scene, or the Queen Mab story. Anyone who considers it merely musical technical bluff would be wrong, since the precise organisation of the sonority served not itself but expression, characterisation and musical depiction that is hard to concretise. Please believe it: in Kocsis's workshop great things have happened in a short period of time, there is no more roughness, no more fripperies in evening dress. Sounds no longer die away but end, we don't use a mere two centimetres of the bow etc. etc.

French vocal soloists were on service this evening: Sylvie Sullé, Guy Flechter, Jean-Philippe Courtis, all ambassadors of the very specialised French vocal culture. We heard evidence of a hopeless struggle with French pronunciation in the otherwise noble sound of the National Choir, conscientiously taught by choirmaster Mátyás Antal. There is nothing to be done: during the past half century, the performance of works in the original language has become a norm in all serious music cultures. What we gain, or lose through this, is perhaps the subject for a separate analysis.

János Breuer
(Népszabadság)