Péter Halász conducts the Duisburger Philharmoniker with a nuanced sense of dramatic situations. The dialogues are sharpened for their punchlines and during the arias, Halász gives the soloists enough time for the aura of their characters to unfold.
Under the direction of Péter Halász, the Bern Symphony Orchestra plays Puccini’s heartbreaking music richly, with amazing precision and the requisite touch of velvety sophistication. The conductor is likewise an attentive and dependable partner for the singers.
Read moreThe musical direction of Péter Halász knows how to accord the same importance to the words, which are so essential in this founding prologue, as to the notes without neglecting the symphonic occasions slipped in here and there by Wagner to move the orchestra forward. From the meaningful E flat major at the beginning until the monumental Walhalla music at the end, the orchestral pâté is eloquent and dense without being cloying, the flawless Badische Staatskapelle always appropriates the narration.
Thanks to Péter Halász’s euphoric yet clear and precise conducting, the Budapest Ring possesses a unique dimension and quality – and reaches the standard of the opera houses of Frankfurt or Stuttgart.
After the third premiere, we can now declare with considerable confidence that it was not merely out of a sense of adventure that Péter Halász determined to instruct and conduct Der Ring des Nibelungen – he is also equipped with the requisite artistic humility and professional know-how. It is not just that he is striking or graceful as the situation demands, and that he unfailingly urges the orchestra of the Hungarian State Opera to a technically high quality performance – although that in itself would be quite an achievement. No, he gives us more than that: in contrast to the staging, the orchestral production truly does dig right down to the roots of the musical drama. From the perspective of conducting, Siegfried's real touchstone is the third act, where the musical drama ramps up and the incidents which were thus far of local significance are suddenly transformed into world-shaking, epoch-making events. Well, we can give no higher praise for Péter Halász's Siegfried than to say that, in accordance with its magnitude, this movement also receives a more than satisfactory interpretation.