Budapest Spring Music Festival March 2011 - Day Four

A day off & better weather with mostly sunshine but still not very warm. We took the tube to Deak Square & the minibus up the Buda Castle Hill. We got the view over the Danube, then walked round the West side of the hill. Much of this is being repaved & a new bandstand has been built. Then, we walked in from the end to the square with the National Archive & round the old streets back to the godshop, where the Parliament was now in Sun. We had coffee in the cafe at the end & took the minibus back to Deak Square.

Round Buda

We walked to the synagogue over streets very much in repair & a real mess & down its side to the Blue Rose Restaurant, where we had too much to eat & beers for about €12 altogether. Back to the Jew godshop & paid more than that for tickets. It is an attractive building inside, with no 'idols', unlike the christian ones. The tour was by a local jewess who repeated some lies, such as the Jews having come from Spain & Portugal (they were from Russia) & played the victim card on Israel. Victims they were & the grave of Raoul Wallenburg there is much justified but they don't get it about being compensated for wrongs done to them with someone else's country.

Synagogue

Synagogue interior

Raoul Wallenburg's Grave

We walked to Astoria Station for the tube to the hotel & snoozed until time to get cleaned up for tonight's concert at the Bartok Hall again.

The concert was by the Vienna Symphony under Adam Fischer. The opening piece was the frothy Dances of Galanta & then, a stunning Liszt 1st Piano Concerto by Alice Sara Ott, who again, could play very softly & be heard. She played La Campanella & Fur Elise as encores. After the interval, we had Brahms' 1st Symphony, marred by twice as many strings as necessary for clarity. I explained to several people after, that Brahms wrote the music, then orchestrated in the, some cases, the unorchestratable rather than conceive it all together. Paul said I was the first composer he had heard say the sound was important. He said they talked about structure & key & counterpoint. I said that was how you made the sound but you needed to know what sound you wanted first.