:00:33. > :00:35.Tonight, an orchestra always warmly welcomed at the Proms,
:00:36. > :00:40.playing rich and glorious music by Mozart.
:00:41. > :00:43.It's the Budapest Festival Orchestra this evening, conducted
:00:44. > :00:48.And we're going to focus on the final year of Mozart's life -
:00:49. > :00:51.something of a tragic gift to the romantic imagination.
:00:52. > :00:55.A truly unique musical figure, taken from the world aged just 35,
:00:56. > :01:01.at a time when he was writing music of almost unearthly beauty.
:01:02. > :01:04.Mozart's magnificent Requiem, unfinished when he died on the 5th
:01:05. > :01:12.Fischer and his Hungarian musicians are going to set it in context
:01:13. > :01:23.with two other works from the same astonishing period.
:01:24. > :01:41.Let's just listen to the tuning for a moment. Not like the normal tuning
:01:42. > :01:43.you get. Playing a bit of Mozart's Magic Flute to get to the right
:01:44. > :01:45.note. first performed in Prague just two
:01:46. > :01:50.months before Mozart's death. And we start with the concert aria
:01:51. > :01:53.Per Questa Bella Mano - By Your Lovely Hand -
:01:54. > :01:55.which Mozart composed for his friend Franz Xaver Gerl,
:01:56. > :01:58.a fine bass, and the theatre's talented principal
:01:59. > :01:59.double bass player. Gerl had premiered the role
:02:00. > :02:01.of Sarastro in Mozart's He was a member of the company
:02:02. > :02:05.at the Freihaus-Theater in Vienna, and Mozart also honoured
:02:06. > :02:07.the theatre's talented principal double bass player with a virtuosic
:02:08. > :02:10.and highly challenging solo part. Hanno Muller-Brachmann
:02:11. > :02:13.will sing the aria, alongside Mozart's concert aria
:02:14. > :09:15.Per Questa Bella Mano, sung by Hanno Muller-Brachmann
:09:16. > :09:18.with solo double bass player Hanno Muller-Brachmann replacing
:09:19. > :09:25.at short notice Neal Davies, Zsolt Fejervari has been
:09:26. > :09:56.principal double bass of the Budapest Festival Orchestra
:09:57. > :09:59.for over 20 years. He's also a lecturer at the Franz
:10:00. > :10:15.Liszt Academy of Music. Hanno Muller-Brachmann
:10:16. > :10:17.began his musical training Hanno Muller-Brachmann
:10:18. > :10:25.was on tour with Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra
:10:26. > :10:27.earlier this year, Next, Mozart's Clarinet Concerto,
:10:28. > :10:34.one of his most popular works, though it's unlikely that he ever
:10:35. > :10:36.heard it performed himself. The velvety, luxurious sound
:10:37. > :10:39.of the clarinet was relatively new at the time Mozart was writing -
:10:40. > :10:42.the instrument hadn't been available He'd heard it only on his
:10:43. > :10:48.travels around Europe. As he wrote to his father,
:10:49. > :10:53."Ah, if only we had clarinets too! "How much finer and better our
:10:54. > :10:56.orchestra might be". Thankfully, all this
:10:57. > :10:58.changed in the early 1780s, when Mozart moved to Vienna,
:10:59. > :11:01.and he was quick to put the instrument to good
:11:02. > :11:03.use in piano concertos, symphonies, operas
:11:04. > :11:07.and chamber music. No surprise that he was keen
:11:08. > :11:14.to write a clarinet concerto. His friend and fellow
:11:15. > :11:16.Freemason Anton Stadler was the first great virtuoso
:11:17. > :11:17.clarinettist, and Mozart When Stadler premiered
:11:18. > :11:22.the concerto in Prague in 1791, he played in on a basset clarinet,
:11:23. > :11:25.an instrument he'd helped to create with the Viennese
:11:26. > :11:29.instrument-maker Theodor Lotz, adding four extra notes to
:11:30. > :11:33.the bottom of the clarinet's range. It's this sort of instrument that
:11:34. > :11:37.soloist Akos Acs, principal clarinet of the Budapest Festival Orchestra,
:11:38. > :11:47.will be playing tonight. So now here comes Akos Acs
:11:48. > :11:54.with conductor Ivan Fischer, to perform Mozart's Clarinet
:11:55. > :11:56.Concerto in A major with Akos Acs was the soloist in Mozart's
:11:57. > :40:37.Clarinet Concerto in A major, with the Budapest Festival Orchestra
:40:38. > :41:01.conducted by Ivan Fischer. Written for the basset clarinet and
:41:02. > :41:05.played this evening with that extraordinary, rich depth in the
:41:06. > :41:14.sound of the solo part. So lustrous, rich and velvety. Mozart wrote the
:41:15. > :41:19.work for his friend who was the lucky recipient of the clarinet
:41:20. > :41:23.parts in other works by the composer, including the Clarinet
:41:24. > :41:31.Quintet, written shortly before the concerto. One listener wrote of the
:41:32. > :41:35.plane, I never thought the clarinet could be capable of imitating a
:41:36. > :41:41.human voice so deceptively as it was imitated by you. Truly your
:41:42. > :41:47.instrument has so soft and lovely a tone that nobody who has a heart can
:41:48. > :42:00.resist it. And what a lovely town from him this evening. From the
:42:01. > :42:04.Hungarian town. Joined the Budapest Festival Orchestra on a scholarship
:42:05. > :42:05.since 2002 and has been the principal clarinet for the last 17
:42:06. > :42:22.years. It is his mother who encouraged him
:42:23. > :42:27.to take up an instrument. He went to Budapest and studied at the
:42:28. > :42:58.conservator and the academy. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
:42:59. > :44:04.What a great encore! Akos Acs played Sholem-Alekhem,
:44:05. > :44:10.Rov Feidman - "Peace be upon you, Rabbi Feidman", by the Hungarian
:44:11. > :44:27.clarinettist Bela Kovacs. That piece written to him as a
:44:28. > :44:35.tribute. Played as an encore here at the BBC Proms. That's APs that the
:44:36. > :44:40.Budapest Festival Orchestra play in a series of concerts that they give
:44:41. > :44:52.in abandoned synagogues. -- that is a piece of music. It often finds
:44:53. > :44:57.many a central square, now abandoned and no longer used for worship. He
:44:58. > :45:04.tells me he takes that to make a point about the Jewish heritage of
:45:05. > :45:13.music in Hungary. A splendid encore from tonight's soloist.
:45:14. > :45:22.We move onto the jewel in the crown of tonight's Prom, Mozart's Requiem.
:45:23. > :45:25.Mozart was still working on it when he died and the story
:45:26. > :45:26.of its composition is full of mystery.
:45:27. > :45:29.Over the years, speculation has run rife as fact and fiction
:45:30. > :45:33.What we do know is that an anonymous agent approached Mozart asking
:45:34. > :45:37.This man was acting on behalf of a nobleman who wanted
:45:38. > :45:39.to commemorate the death of his wife by an annual performance
:45:40. > :45:43.Though Mozart would write it, it's thought the Count intended
:45:44. > :45:47.Mozart agreed to the commission - he was short of cash.
:45:48. > :45:51.After his death, Mozart's widow Constanze decided to
:45:52. > :45:55.have the Requiem completed by her husband's pupil Franz Xaver
:45:56. > :45:59.It's unclear whether Sussmayr had discussed the work with Mozart.
:46:00. > :46:02.Some sources at the time describe Mozart on his death-bed,
:46:03. > :46:05.dictating ideas, or there may have been long-lost sketches that
:46:06. > :46:13.I asked tonight's conductor, Ivan Fischer, about his own approach
:46:14. > :46:18.to this remarkable music, but we began by discussing
:46:19. > :46:29.the thought behind tonight's Prom - Mozart's final year, 1791.
:46:30. > :46:37.I wish it wouldn't be his last year, because the question is what would
:46:38. > :46:42.have happened if Mozart had lived longer? Maybe he would have been the
:46:43. > :46:48.great Romantic composer full stop I would love to hear works by the old
:46:49. > :46:52.Mozart. What would he have written in a few years? It's so difficult
:46:53. > :47:00.that he died. I can't accept it. And I think something essential happened
:47:01. > :47:10.in his last year. Which was? He started to compose in a way which is
:47:11. > :47:14.less formal, less serving the taste of the aristocracy, but found maybe
:47:15. > :47:28.his own voice, or our voice, or the voice of the people, which led to
:47:29. > :47:31.the Romantic period. Often the Requiem is staged with the thing is
:47:32. > :47:35.standing in front of the orchestra, but here, you've placed them within
:47:36. > :47:39.the orchestra. Can you explain the idea behind that? What does the
:47:40. > :47:48.musicians see? The musician sees notes. They play the notes. And the
:47:49. > :47:52.chorus is somewhere far away, and the soloist is there, and I always
:47:53. > :48:00.found that there is something wrong here, and then I started to think
:48:01. > :48:12.let's pack everybody together, like on a church balcony, where there is
:48:13. > :48:16.very little room. And suddenly some magic happened, because the
:48:17. > :48:22.instrumentalists start to listen to the text, to the words. It's
:48:23. > :48:27.wonderful, because then they play with the full understanding of what
:48:28. > :48:31.the music means. And does it work both ways? Does it benefit the
:48:32. > :48:39.singers? Absolutely, because the combination of singer instrument is
:48:40. > :48:44.a natural blending phenomenon. The instrumentalists, most of the time,
:48:45. > :48:47.play the same lines. They help the singer and they both breathe
:48:48. > :48:54.together. I don't need to conduct very much. We shall see just how
:48:55. > :49:04.much conducting Ivan Fischer is going to do, the four soloists, Lucy
:49:05. > :49:11.Crowe, mezzo-soprano Barbara Kozelj, based Hanno Muller-Brachmann, the
:49:12. > :49:19.choir risk Collegium Vocale Gent joining the Budapest Festival
:49:20. > :49:23.Orchestra. Mozart's Requiem, and as you can see, Ivan Fischer already
:49:24. > :49:30.onstage, determined to avoid a grand entrance before this piece, with the
:49:31. > :49:34.last notes that Mozart wrote within it. For this Proms performance of
:49:35. > :38:50.Mozart's Requiem. Mozart's Requiem, performed
:38:51. > :39:08.by the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Collegium Vocale Gent,
:39:09. > :39:44.conducted by Ivan Fischer. performing with the choir, Collegium
:39:45. > :39:46.Vocale Gent, spread throughout the orchestra, to encourage the
:39:47. > :39:50.orchestral players to listen to the words as well as think about the
:39:51. > :39:55.music, as Maestro Fischer was explaining earlier on.
:39:56. > :40:03.But also surely to create this rich sense of theatre that we've
:40:04. > :40:08.witnessed this evening. Whether it's true or not that Mozart said I'm
:40:09. > :40:13.writing my own funeral music, I must not leave it unfinished, we do
:40:14. > :40:22.absolutely no that the work we've just heard contains the last notes
:40:23. > :40:27.that Mozart was ever to write. Between the sections that he
:40:28. > :40:33.completed, the vocal parts and instrumental lines and the other
:40:34. > :40:38.sections, he is responsible for two thirds of the Requiem, the work
:40:39. > :40:40.completed partly by his student and partly, as the programme tonight
:40:41. > :40:50.puts it, "By others". A wonderfully dark sound
:40:51. > :40:53.from the orchestra - no flutes, oboes or clarinets, just two
:40:54. > :41:22.basset-horns and two Benjamin Bayl, the chorus master of
:41:23. > :41:29.Collegium Vocale Gent. This amazing orchestra from Hungary making their
:41:30. > :41:34.11th appearance tonight at the BBC Proms, an appearance by the Budapest
:41:35. > :41:37.Festival Orchestra, which now guarantees a sold-out while Albert
:41:38. > :41:50.Hall, as we've seen once again this evening. -- while Albert Hall. Ivan
:41:51. > :41:55.Fischer - such a great advocate for his home city and for the music of
:41:56. > :42:05.central Europe, as he brings us to the end of this or-Mozart programme.
:42:06. > :42:10.What a great night it's been. The Proms are back here on BBC Four on
:42:11. > :42:13.Sunday, when you can see the great pianist.
:42:14. > :42:15.Martha Argerich performing Liszt's first piano concerto
:42:16. > :42:16.with Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern
:42:17. > :42:23.But for now, from me, Petroc Trelawny, and all of us here