During their last tour they visited 5 cities in ten days travelling 6.400 kilometres and playing to packed houses where the critics were falling over each other to describe the “immense radiant sound”, the “grandeur and mystery”, not to mention “crazy, breathtaking, unmissable” so that “hairs on your neck stand up”.

The New York Times even said that the BFO was “quite possibly the best orchestra in the world”. After a tour of South America the BFO will be one of the highlights of the Edinburgh Festival this year.

This is the outstanding achievement of the orchestra’s conductor Ivan Fischer who makes the orchestra, according to the critics , “breathe as one”. He has also taught them to sing. At the end of every concert, instead of the usual encore, the orchestra abandons its instruments and sings a simple lullaby or German Lieder in descant which raises yet more hairs on the back of your neck.

This year the maestro is the recipient of the Abu Dhabi Festival Award and has been nominated by Gramophone magazine Best Artist of the Year, as one of the ten musicians who has most enriched music over the years.

The orchestra does free community concerts all over Hungary in abandoned synagogues and in churches to bring music to as many people as possible, especially to underprivileged children.

Ivan Fischer, who has a growing family of his own, also does informal “Cocoa concerts” for children, their parents and grandparents, followed by cocoa in red spotted mugs. To buy a season ticket you should go on the website www.bfz.hu/en/young-bfo/programs.

The Budapest Festival Orchestra is not just for the musically literate. I am the musical equivalent of someone who in art terms “doesn’t know much about art but knows what he likes”. And yet, when I am listening to the BFO at the MUPA I am alternately electrified or moved to tears or ejected out of my seat depending on whether the mood is adagio, appassionato or splendidly maestoso.

By Anne Marshall Zwack for XpatLoop.com

Anne was born in England in 1946, grew up in Cambridge and was educated in England and in Belgium. She lived and worked for several years in Paris, Rome and Milan where she met Peter Zwack who swept her off her feet and eventually brought her back to Hungary.

During this time she wrote for many important American publications including the Travel Section of the New York Times, Travel + Leisure and Gourmet Magazine. She currently divides her time between Budapest and Tuscany. Peter and Anne Zwack have two children and were married for forty years.