MAESTRO RICCARDO FRIZZA IS BACK TO BUDAPEST FOR HIS SECOND SEASON AS THE CHIEF CONDUCTOR OF HUNGARIAN RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA AND CHOIR – interview by papageno.hu
– This is your second season collaborating with the Hugarian Radio Art Groups, what were your overall impressions after the first season?
This second season is very important. The musicians and I are starting to know each other well. I’m beginning to recognise the qualities and characteristics of each one of them and we’re working together to develop overall calibre, the orchestra’s ability to listen and, above all, to find a communicative affinity between my gestures, my way of making music, and their reaction. And I’d say that we’ve worked well up to this point.
– Which of the works are you considering as the highlight of this 2023/2024 season?
All the programmes I’m working on are extremely important. You can see that we’re working on a demanding repertoire. I’m thinking of Tchaikovsky, but also the Schumann piano concerto, works which allow our orchestra to measure itself against the interpretations of other top orchestras. Then, of course, Mahler’s Symphony no. 8 will be a key moment, during which we’ll be able to bring to bear the full force of the radio, with the orchestra, the mixed choirs and the children’s choir. Another one is the concert programme for the 80th Jubilee, an unusual concert in which three conductors (Tamás Vásáry, János Kovács and I) will take turns on the podium for three masterpieces (Les Préludes by Liszt, Mendelssohn’s Psalm 42 and Ein Heldenleben by Richard Strauss).
– International press will definitely give special attention to your Music Day concert (October 1.) with Korean piano-prodigy Yunchan Lim. You are under the same art agency, so you probably already know him. He is still very young but has a distinguished conception on his music. How do you think the two of you will collaborate?
We’re extremely happy to have engaged Yunchan Lim for the orchestra radio season, because he’s one of the piano prodigies emerging on the international scene, after creating a sensation by winning the Van Cliburn award. It’s true that we work with the same agency, but I’ve never met him. This is the first time that we’ll be working together and we’ve never met face to face. We’ve exchanged letters and I’m very grateful that he’s accepted the invitation to Budapest. He already has orchestras like the New York Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony orchestra on his schedule, so it’s a great satisfaction to know that he’s added our orchestra to those. I’m sure that Yunchan Lim will leave an enormous mark here in Budapest. ,
– As for the Hungarian Radio Orchestra”s 80th Anniversay Concert you picked Richard Strauss’s „A Hero’s Life” to conduct. Do you have any special reason that you decided on this work?
I chose to conduct Ein Heldenleben not only because it’s one of the most representative and difficult pieces for a symphony orchestra, but also because, in it, ‘the Emperor has no clothes’. All the expressive qualities and individual technique of our musicians will be highlighted. It’s an exciting challenge, but we want to offer a listening experience that goes beyond technical virtuosity (which marks a point of arrival in the orchestral development that started with Berlioz and Wagner), gratifying the audience with self-referencing play and the beauty of sound, which make this, Strauss’s last symphonic poem so valuable because it’s a conscious farewell to what had, until then, been his preferred genre. And yet, when he composed Ein Heldenleben, Strauss was not yet thirty-five years old.