Music Reviews : Liszt Chamber Group at Biltmore

The Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra of Budapest launched the Nakamichi series of Music in Historic Sites concerts at the Biltmore’s Hotel Crystal Ballroom on Sunday with a program that may have seemed overly familiar.

But in the process of reheating such oft-roasted Romantic chestnuts as the Grieg “Holberg” Suite and Tchaikovsky’s “Serenade for Strings” the 16 players, directed from the concertmaster’s chair by Janos Rolla, exhibited ensemble skills the likes of which have not been heard since the palmiest days of I Musici and the young Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. If there is today a string orchestra comparable to the Franz Liszt in terms of passion, unanimity of attack and rich, beguiling sonority it has not visited this part of the world.

In both Grieg and Tchaikovsky, the Hungarians combined rhythmic intensity with arching, aching lyricism. If, as one suspects, the ensemble has played these works countless times, familiarity has nonetheless refused to breed casualness.

There were ample rewards as well in the wonderfully witty “Don Quichotte” Suite of Telemann, the strings in flawless balance, if indulging in a good deal more vibrato than is ideal for the rocket-like propulsiveness of the score’s fast movements, supported by the lively but discreet harpsichord continuo of Zsuza Pertis.

Also on the program, a quaint bowdlerization by Albert Coates of some Purcell tunes, not as grotesque as Sir Hamilton Harty’s Handel, but in its quieter way, equally wide of the stylistic mark; Mozart’s Divertimento in F, K.138, played with terrific dash and relish; and, among the encores, a gloriously idiomatic performance--throbbing string sonorities, pounding rhythms, soaring melodies--of the familiar Bartok Romanian Dances.