Budapest Strings Chamber Orchestra

Richard Strauss, the inimitable master of enigmatic genre designations, called his last opera, Capriccio, a conversation piece for music and elsewhere a theatrical fugue. Nor is the opening scene conventional: string sextet chamber music evoking the elegance and charm of the Rococo period. The youthful Mendelssohn similarly plays with the stylistic traits of earlier periods. In the string symphony in C major written more than a hundred years earlier than Capriccio, and in the large-scale A minor piano concerto written at the age of fourteen, we hear the experimental voice of the early classics. This concerto, which although truly beautiful is rarely heard in concert halls, is performed with solo by Mihály Berecz; it remains a secret as to what story his father, András Berecz, is going to relate.