HPO: Bella Miah

“Haydn was full of surprises. In his day, audiences loved it, they shouted, they celebrated, the atmosphere at a concert was like a rock concert today.” Conductor Adam Fischer believes that the essence of a performance that is faithful to the era is not that the music sounds the same as it did 200 years ago. What is more important is that the performance affects the audience the same way it did when the composer was alive. “A period performance is no good if it leaves people cold.” (Rondo magazine, 3/2025) The premiere of Béla Bartók’s orchestral suite The Miraculous Mandarin was accompanied by a storm of scandal and audience riots. The work’s range of expression ranges from the barbaric and riotous to the sublime and sophisticated.