Liszt Fest Magazine by Müpa Budapest

FEST

VO LU M E 1 , O C TO B E R 2021

MAGAZINE

MAGA ZINE OF THE LISZT FEST INTERNATIONAL CULTURAL FESTIVAL

EXPERIENCE! In every respect.

Corporate partner:

Müpa Budapest is supported by the Ministry of Human Capacities

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THE NATIONAL ESSENCE OF A WORLD CITIZEN

AN ORCHESTRA IN A SINGLE INSTRUMENT

WHO OWNS FRANZ LISZT?

IN SEARCH OF THE GENUINE SOUND

OUR RECOM MENDATIONS

IN A SAFE ENVIRONMENT

CAUCASIAN CULTURE COMES TO BUDAPEST

THE HISTORY OF A SYMBIOSIS

OUR RECOM MENDATIONS

AGELESS CARMEN

CONTEMPORARY TREASURE HUNTING IN THE BÁLNA

‘YOU CAN’T LIE WHEN YOU’RE MAKING MUSIC’

MASS IN THE TIME OF ABSOLUTISM

CSABA KÁEL Photo: Szilvia Csibi / Müpa Budapest

THE NATIONAL ESSENCE OF A WORLD CITIZEN A revolutionary innovative artist, a pop star of the Romantic era, one of the greatest composers in music history and a European citizen who probed his Hungarian identity: these are the ideas at the focus of the Liszt Fest International Cultural Festival, held for the first time this year between 8 and 24 October. The festival aims to present the unparalleled œuvre and spirit of Franz Liszt, who was born 210 years ago, in countless genres, also providing inspiration and opportunities for collaboration to contemporary artists. Over seventeen days, the festival welcomes visitors in Budapest’s most important cultural institutions, as well as special venues such as the Esztergom Cathedral and the Observatory on Svábhegy. We chatted about the plans for the Liszt Fest with Csaba Káel, CEO of the Müpa Budapest, which created this all-round festival of the arts.

Franz Liszt was extraordinarily productive in many genres of nineteenth-century music, and felt a duty to make music available for all: though at the time concert-going was a privilege for a much narrower class than today, it is no exaggeration to say that in the homes of Europe, it was from Liszt’s scores that music was played. ‘Liszt’s creative output is marked strongly by innovation. Of the many interesting aspects in his life, an important one is that at the height of his international fame he began to investigate his Hungarian identity more profoundly,’ said Csaba Káel about the importance of Franz Liszt, or Liszt Ferenc, as his name is traditionally written in his native land, and from whom the festival takes its name. Liszt’s pioneering spirit was manifested in many ways: he was a pop star before the appearance of popular mass culture, and played in packed concert halls. He swept European audiences away, and the expression ‘Hungarian style’ spread in Europe after the astounding intensity of Liszt’s performances. A pianist-composer, he was often on the road: he covered about a hundred thousand kilometres, equivalent to travelling round the Earth two-and-a-half times. ‘It’s no coincidence that Liszt is a standard-bearer for Hungarian cultural identity, acting as a bridge between Hungary and Europe. Since the political transition of 1989, a EuroCity train named after Franz Liszt has

linked Budapest to Vienna, and Budapest’s international airport also bears his name,’ said Csaba Káel, CEO of Müpa Budapest. He explained how these relationships and influences will be conjured up by the concert of the world-famous baritone Thomas Hampson, with the Orchester Wiener Akademie conducted by Martin Haselböck, who is renowned as a specialist of Liszt’s organ works too. They bring a special programme to the Liszt Fest: their Budapest concert features the world premiere of the original transcription of two Liszt lieder. In his greeting in the Müpa Magazine, the Austrian conductor said the reason Liszt became the model for many later great composers was that ‘he was receptive not just to a wide variety of traditions, but was an experimenter, and his innovative spirit looked to the future. A cardinal idea behind this festival is to use unusual contemporary collaborations in many genres to give a glimpse into Liszt’s œuvre from the perspective of intellectual links important to the composer. As well as concerts of classical and contemporary music and dance performances, visitors can choose from an international Liszt conference, world stars from the non-classical music scene, and literary and art events. ‘At the evening entitled The Sounds of Freedom, alongside works by Bartók and Liszt, there will be a winning entry from Müpa’s Composition Competition, the world premiere of the work To the Hungarians by Roland Szentpáli. Audiences can hear the most outstanding electro-acoustic compositions from the successful 2020 competition in the Müpa, and the best of the works for small jazz line-ups in BMC. To commemorate the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death we have organized a concert where the Italian writer who “wrote the greatest poem in world literature” (to quote the poet Mihály Babits) links the works of Franz Liszt to Hungarian and international choral works,’ said the CEO of Müpa Budapest. An integral part of Liszt’s presence in Budapest is formed by the churches in which he played the organ. Religious devotion was a key part of his personality, for in his later years he received the tonsure, and then became an abbé, while the expression of religion and spirituality became more marked in his music. ‘We have dedicated an entire series to organ recitals in churches. Anyone who attends one of these concerts can feel the personal presence of Liszt: at most they will be distant from him in time, but not in space,’ said Csaba Káel. Liszt went on concert tours in Hungary too, so he is linked not just to Budapest, but to the entire country. As regards plans for the future, Csaba Káel intimated that they aim to turn the festival into a nationwide series of events, involving other cities in Hungary.

Liszt is a standard-bearer for Hungarian cultural identity, acting as a bridge between Hungary and Europe.

‘One symbolic step in this direction is one of the concerts of the first Liszt Fest, where the Esztergom Mass will be performed not in Budapest, but in the venue of its original premiere: the Esztergom Cathedral.’ Over nearly fifteen years the Müpa has won considerable recognition with the Budapest Wagner Days: held in June, this event features in the calendars of Wagnerites alongside the Bayreuther Festspiele. The CEO of Müpa Budapest expressed a wish to aim for a similar trend with the Liszt Fest: ‘our aim is that more and more people come from abroad to discover the side of Franz Liszt that can be found only in Hungary.’ Liszt Fest Magazine

Photo: Meinrad Hofer

MARTIN HASELBÖCK

Liszt has long been the focus of the work of Austrian organist and conductor Martin Haselböck: he was the first to publish the complete edition of Liszt’s organ works, and he also recorded them in 1986. In a prize-winning series of records entitled The Sound of Weimar he recorded all of Liszt’s orchestral works with period instruments, and in the project ReSound he conducts Beethoven works in the venues where they were premiered in Vienna. Joining forces with the world-famous baritone, Thomas Hampson, Haselböck and his orchestra, the Orchester Wiener Akademie, bring to Budapest genuine rarities, the original orchestral transcriptions of three Liszt lieder, two of which will be performed to an audience for the first time.

IN SEARCH OF THE GENUINE SOUND Can you remember what your first great Liszt experience was? I was very young when I was invited to go on tour to East Germany, to give organ concerts. In Weimar I had the opportunity to look at the manuscripts in the GoetheSchiller Archive, and to my greatest astonishment I found more than fifty organ works by Liszt, only a fraction of which were known at the time. I had no inkling that Liszt had composed so much for my instrument. This happened when I was twenty years old, and Liszt has fascinated me ever since. Later I published these organ pieces, and made recordings of them. What prompted you to found your own historically informed orchestra? At the time I was most interested in sacred works by the Viennese classical composers. I’d heard so many poor performances of Haydn and Mozart masses that I knew I had to try in another style. I started my career as an organist; the organ is just like an orchestra, with all kinds of timbres, but you are all alone at the keyboard. I felt the need to perform works with others, to communicate with them about the music. And just as the sound of every single organ is different, when I worked with the orchestra I was interested in what kind of sound the composer actually imagined when he wrote that particular movement. My main aim is to find the genuine, original sound, and that’s why we went for period instruments. Why is sound quality so important to you? Several decades ago musicologists were preoccupied with structure and form. But music comes to life mainly through sound–that is what creates its atmosphere. Of course every piece has its own structure, but its own special soundscape and aura are at least as important. For me, it’s quite a different experience to hear the instruments on which, say, Beethoven played his piano concertos, or which Liszt heard in his own orchestra. The sound quality has a basic influence on how we listen to the music, how we approach it. Audiences don’t study the score; they know the work in the form of its soundscape. Playing Liszt’s works on period instruments is still a fairly unusual enterprise. What can we learn of his music from this approach? In many respects, Liszt’s treatment of the instruments was revolutionary—extremely modern, even. For instance, he was the first to introduce the tuba into the symphony orchestra. Unlike Bruckner, who used a tuba part only in his late works, Liszt was so excited by this instrument that during his Weimar years, from 1848, he included it in every single one of his orchestral pieces. Then there’s the bass clarinet, which usually plays just a few notes in orchestral pieces, but in the Dante Symphony he gives it an entire solo passage. We can find the most virtuoso harp parts in Liszt too. His orchestration is wonderful!

The symphony orchestra as we know it today had taken shape by the end of the nineteenth century. Will we hear any instruments in the concert which are different from the customary ones? The violins, for instance, are almost the same as in today’s orchestras, but instead of metal, the strings are made of catgut. What is certainly different is the balance between strings and brass. If I worked with modern brass instruments the interpretation would seem simply aggressive, but period brass instruments were able to blend with the sound of the strings. This is important because Liszt mixed the ensemble of various instruments and parts to create a panoply of timbres, and with the instruments he knew and used it is easier to create the balance necessary for this. So we’re not doing anything revolutionary, but the audience will get a different style and sound quality to what they may be accustomed to.

Why have you coupled the world premiere of Liszt lieder with Bruckner’s Symphony No. 3? Wagner and Liszt were the most important figures in Bruckner’s life. He wanted to dedicate one symphony to each of them; he asked Wagner first which one he would accept, and he chose the third. Bruckner then offered the second to Liszt. In many passages of Bruckner’s symphonies we can find techniques of instrumentation reminiscent of Liszt. In addition to Liszt’s two late lieder for baritone and orchestra here being performed for the first time anywhere, in this concert I also want to show how, in many respects, Liszt’s writing for the orchestra resembles the great well-known Romantic symphonies—or vice versa. Today there are countless historical orchestras all over the world, but when you founded your ensemble in 1985, there were much fewer. What makes the Orchester Wiener Akademie’s identity special for you? The Orchester Wiener Akademie started as a Baroque orchestra; we belonged to the second generation of period orchestras, after Harnoncourt and the other great pioneers. In the beginning, we programmed Bach, Handel, and earlier works, then gradually we shifted the focus onto the Romantic repertoire. We are the only orchestra to have played every single note of Liszt’s orchestral œuvre

Photo: Andrej Grili

What other possibilities are latent in Liszt’s music? In a certain sense, Liszt is an undiscovered composer. Other Romantic orchestral works, say the Bruckner symphonies, have been performed by hundreds of orchestras and conductors. Many of Liszt’s pieces, by contrast, are still completely unknown, because even though he wrote many works for orchestra, he could not premiere many of them during his lifetime. In other words, Liszt still has surprises in store for us, and there is still the chance we might discover new pieces. For instance, the October concert includes three of his lieder, two of which nobody has ever heard, while the third is the last

work Liszt completed. I’m very pleased they can be played in Budapest: the latter song, Vätergruft, was transcribed for voice and orchestra the last time he was in Budapest, and this gives the event a very different emotional context.

ORCHESTER WIENER AKADEMIE

12. 10. 2021, 7.30 pm Müpa Budapest – Béla Bartók National Concert Hall

THOMAS HAMPSON (voice) AND THE ORCHESTER WIENER AKADEMIE Liszt: Prometheus Schubert–Liszt: Der Doppelgänger – for baritone and orchestra Liszt: Die Vätergruft (The Fathers’ Crypt) – for baritone and orchestra Liszt: The Errant Jew (Le juif errant) – for baritone and orchestra Liszt: To the Dead of Weimar (Weimar Toten) – for baritone and orchestra Bruckner: Symphony No. 3 in D minor – 1889 version Conductor: Martin Haselböck

on period instruments. I think the most important thing for us is the continuous development of styles and approaches. We are spurred on by constant curiosity to discover the difference between the sound-worlds of different eras, works, and types of instrument, because they are all quite different, just as a Steinway and Bösendorfer piano are hugely different. But the historically informed music scene itself is in constant flux: a few decades ago musicians could either play only a Baroque or only a modern oboe; but today there are more and more young musicians who learn several versions of the same instrument, which opens new prospects and opportunities for orchestras too. Historically informed performance is not just about scholarship: as well as researching as much information as possible about the context and style of a given piece, the immediacy of the interpretation, its subjectivity and expressivity, is just as important as in a modern orchestra. Fanni Molnár

PAST and PRESENT, classical and modern, culture and entertainment in unrivalled HARMONY, all in Várkert Bazár’s colourful programmes.

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EVA

IN A SAFE ENVIRONMENT eva (Dorina Takács), Saya Noé (Mimi Kőrös), and Felícia Lili Bozóky’s I Am Soyuz project: three young women, who write, arrange and perform their own songs. It is common among men to control every detail of their music, but for women this is still a rarity. What might be the reason?

WRITING SONGS AS A WOMAN

In recent years the international pop music press and trade has done some serious self-examination. It might seem that women have to fight less now to assert themselves (though on the blog Keret, there are many stories to the contrary, in the 2018 post Female musicians tell what it’s like to be a woman in the Hungarian music industry), but unconscious patterns of behaviour linger on and still have an effect. This is often coupled with inter nalized sexism, which is when even women believe that they don’t understand how to use a guitar or some gear. The feminist critique widespread in the English-language music press goes even further, claiming the whole traditional value system of light music is, albeit tacitly, male-centric. But things are definitely better than they were. In Hungary, the proportion of songwriters registered with Artisjus in the decade from 2010 was 15–17%, while before 2005 this was only 5%. And if more set out on a music career (in addition to the customary role as female vocalist) then there will be more role models, because, as singer Bea Palya often pointed out, it wasn’t so long ago that singer-songwriter women had nobody in Hungary in whose footsteps they could tread. The first really noticeable change was in the early 2010s with the outbreak of bedroom pop, where the number of women making music alone (writing the song, playing it, and uploading it to the net) was much higher than before. Research by sociologist Emília Barna shows that the reason for this is partly that the bedroom is a safe environment (both literally and metaphorically), where male dominance, which marks the public spaces of music, is not felt, or at least less so.

The October concert of the Liszt Fest in the Akvárium Klub shows yet another generation taking the stage with gusto. These three performers all take on the role of singersongwriter-producer as a matter of course. Their playful, heart-felt music, which treats genre boundaries pretty freely, soon brought them great success.

19. 10. 2021, 8 pm Akvárium Klub – Small HALL

EVA / SAYA NOÉ / I AM SOYUZ

MORE PERSONAL THAN JUST A HIT

This is especially true of Mimi Kőrös (stage name Saya Noé) because she has achieved what is a mere dream for many musicians: she works exclusively with music, and has built over the years a serious, 35,000-strong fanbase on Twitch. Her songs make you fell she has mastered all the tricks of today’s electronica-based pop. No wonder several European radio stations and playlist curators have noticed her, but in Hungary she still hasn’t been discovered. At the same time, it is more important for her to make music that is personal than to make a hit. At times she is endearingly playful, other times she plumbs the depths; her music can be labelled alternative electropop, but sometimes has elements of art pop. (Out come the viola, the cello, and the flute, played by members of Mimi’s family.) Behind her debut album Museum of Sins is a serious concept: the record is ‘a serenade to the good, the bad, and the ugly in all of us, with songs that encapsulate both the beautiful and the vexatious moments of life.’

LOST LOVE SONGS IN SPACE

The songs of Felícia Lili Bozóky, aka I Am Soyuz, are so personal and intimate in their effect that listening to her we cannot help but imagine the music being born from her feelings, before our very eyes (though in actual fact they are the result of much hard work.) At her concerts, she shares personal stories with the audience between the songs. Her music can be described as indie folk, and the overall effect, in addition to Lili’s voice and the personality it radiates, is determined by the instruments she uses (guitar, ukulele, banjo, accordion, omnichord, and what is known as a pocket piano). She herself describes what she does as ‘love songs about what it’s like to be lost in space.’

SAYA NOÉ

I Am Soyuz has travelled the world over, doing concert tours in Japan, Iceland, and ‘by chance’ performing at the legendary Burning Man festival in the US. In addition to making music, she is a paediatrician in Stockholm. The title of her debut album makes reference to this: Whipple is a surgical procedure where much of the stomach and pancreas is removed from the abdominal cavity—just as she gives her all in her songs. In addition to this, as she told the journal Tiszatáj, ‘as a doctor I get so much from my patients, I have a peephole into the lives of others, their dreams, their struggles. There’s an incredible amount you can learn from this. It opens your worldview to humility, and the striving to understand others.’

HYPNOTIC ELECTRONICA AND FOLK SONGS

Dorina Takács, whose stage name is eva, did folk dance as a child, went to a music school, and then released her first songs at the age of 19, soon making a name for herself in the industry—and increasingly with the public too. In autumn 2020 she was already on the HOTS shortlist—which is for performers considered to be the most suitable for an international career (along with Saya Noé, incidentally)—, and she was shortly invited to an online showcase festival. Her unusual music can be categorized as folktronica: she embeds her folksong-inspired vocals in an electronic web of refined synths and effects with tribal and house beats. In her songs, you can feel she has a clear idea of what she wants to achieve, and she achieves it: there’s not a trace of the beginner finding her feet. And she too is able to be playful and deep simultaneously. ‘I see my job as to create harmony with my songs, to be thoughtprovoking, and to bridge the gap between modern music and traditional Hungarian folk music,’ she says. András Rónai

Photo: Ádám Pintér

CLASSICAL MUSIC AND JAZZ

THE HISTORY OF A SYMBIOSIS Sharply drawn borders run between the different genres of music, but the real question is whether we can, and should, cross them? Is there any need, or impulsion, to discover what is on the other side, and to form an alliance with what we find there? This question reverberates throughout music history: anyone who goes on stage as a musician also sets out on a journey into the unknown. This spirit of adventure is particularly true of jazz musicians, who have always liked to reach beyond their own genre to seek out new raw material.

Over its 130-year history, jazz has never been without borrowed material and reached boldly for existing melodies to use them as inspiration; no other branch of music has this kind of propensity to transform the compositions it borrows or the pieces it arranges into its own image. Suffice it to think of John Coltrane, when he plays My Favourite Things on the soprano saxophone: nobody listens to this and thinks of Julie Andrews from The Sound of Music. Or listening to Vilia, again by Coltrane, the unsuspecting jazz aficionado would perhaps not guess that the melody is taken from Franz Lehár’s famous operetta, The Merry Widow. Beginning in the period of swing, it was natural that pop melodies and golden oldies became jazz standards, and the final result often moved in a completely different direction. For an alien visitor, the concept of jazz would certainly be one of the most difficult things to explain, because even we ourselves have many different ideas about it. Jazz is made jazz by cool rhythms, syncopation, harmonies that go way beyond simple triads, cunningly woven melodies, and improvisation—among other things. And although there are rules and limitations, casting them aside is just as important, as the careers of the greatest will testify. The diversity of the genre aroused the curiosity of composers of classical music too, and several of them, in spite of their reservations, tried to form some kind of relationship with it, or borrow from it. Though he decidedly disagreed with jazz and never really made peace with it, Béla Bartók reached a high level of comprehension, largely through the influence of American clarinettist Benny Goodman,

for whom he wrote a chamber work, Contrasts. The acceptance of jazz was largely aided by great performers, jazz musicians with skills comparable to that of classically trained instrumentalists. Jazz began as light music for entertainment, but for a while now it has been classified as one of the high contemporary arts, while retaining its popular nature. This dual character made jazz eminently fit the artistic ideal of the twentieth century, and it is no exaggeration to say that A zeneművészeti alongside film,alkotások it became one of the defining and műfajai minden esetben artistic manifestations of historically important a történeti realitást Ifképviselik: the last century. we think of the Afro-American normáikat a zeneszerzők civil rights movement, Glenn Miller’s big-band magukévá tehetik, megkerülhetik works, the modernization of cities after the war, vagy át is accompaniment léphetik. Bartók to these reveries theakár mental Béla sokszorofrendkívül is zenéje some variety jazz that fits with the given innovatív egyedi, alkotópályája era andéslocale, and of course it left a deep mark során azonban sohasem szakított on the Eastern European socialist bloc and the az elődöktől örökölt műfaji Cuban revolution too. No wonder the powerful hagyománnyal. Hátrahagyott aura of jazz demanded its place in classical œuvre-je ugyan „csak” a világi music too: Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Hindemith, műfajokra szorítkozik, de azon Honegger, Ravel, Weill, American composers, belül kaleidoszkópszerűen particularly Gershwin, then Bernstein, not only változatos: nembut egythey olyan studied jazz, wove actual elements alkotó tükrözi, aki csupán of itképét into their pieces. But how did classical néhány zsánerbenappear volt in jazz? musicjellemző and its mentality kiemelkedő. It is often said that the first jazz musician was Johann Sebastian Bach. The basso continuo (a notated bass line) and the ability to improvise on it, the wonderfully crafted sequences, the apotheosis of counterpoint, do indeed lead to certain idioms of jazz. It is no coincidence that the most famous classical music arrangements were made from pieces by Bach, thanks to their

It is no exaggeration to say that alongside film, it became one of the historically important artistic manifestations of the last century.

12. 10. 2021, 8 pm Liszt Academy – Solti Hall

JAZZICAL TRIO The members of the trio: Norbert Káel – piano, Péter Oláh – double bass, András Lakatos “Pecek” – drums

strong affinity of genre, their easily transplanted melodies and structure. Jacques Loussier started making jazz arrangements of Bach back in the 1950s, and although he went on to release many records that synthesized classical music and jazz, almost creating an idiom of his own, Bach remained in the focus of his work all along. Others created theories or concepts, taking the rule systems of classical music as an example. One of the most influential writings was by George Russell, who is known as a musician only to the cognoscenti, but who left a lasting body of work as a theoretician. His 1953 study, The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, became the foundation of modal jazz and current jazz theory, fundamentally influencing the career and music of Miles Davis and his followers. Meanwhile, Russell made a record with Charles Mingus, Jimmy Giuffre and Bill Evans; one of the contributors was serialist composer Milton Babbitt, and Monteverdi was one of the sources of inspiration. From then on, jazz musicians borrowed more and more boldly from classical music, and invited contemporary composers to collaborate, setting out on a path that has now led to a state where in certain works, the alliance between classical music and jazz can no longer be disentangled, for they form an integral whole. In addition, there is of course the school of traditional jazz arrangements of classics. Uri Caine, Mike Westbrook, The Bad Plus and others borrow from almost the entire musical repertoire, from Beethoven and Liszt to Bartók and Ligeti, and they do so with great talent—and luckily for us, there are also Hungarians who have made interesting incursions into this field. Zoltán Végső

13. 10. 2021, 8 pm Müpa Budapest – Glass Hall

9. 10. 2021, 7.30 pm Budapest Music Center – Concert Hall

AN EVENING WITH ANITA HARAG

CRACOW SINGERS 1.

9. 10. 2021, 7 pm Eiffel Art Studios – Miklós Bánffy Stage

LEVENTE GYÖNGYÖSI: THE MASTER AND MARGARITA A VISIT FROM SATAN In a novel whose fate and contents were equally fantastic, Mikhail Bulgakov called cowardice ‘the greatest and most grievous sin of all.’ By contrast, the creators of this work, Levente Gyöngyösi and Szabolcs Várady, have set an example of bravery when they undertook the practically impossible, and conjured up a stage version of The Master and Margarita as an opera-musical. This joint project, encouraged by Gábor Hollerung, who is also the dedicatee and the conductor, was first performed in summer 2017, in a concert performance at the Miskolc Opera Festival, to resounding success. But after that, life had other plans (as if the work’s main protagonist, Satan, had interfered) and after being postponed several times it entered the repertoire of the Opera only as an online broadcast, in a performance rich in circus elements, directed by Vajk Szente. But now the audience will be able to see it live, as Woland visits Moscow, where his rock-infused voice conjures up even the stimulating effect of the band Aerosmith. In the title roles we find the same Master and Margarita as at the premiere in Miskolc, namely Péter Balczó and Orsolya Sáfár, and the conductor for the evening will naturally be Gábor Hollerung, at the helm of the Budafok Dohnanyi Orchestra, with whom he shares the dedication.

RIVERS KNOW NO BOUNDARIES Founded in 2013, this Polish chamber choir has formed an imposing creative image, moving freely between eras of music history, styles, and genres, and even strikingly varied artistic collaborations. Since 2018 they have been recurring guests in Budapest, and this time they will be conducted by Zoltán Pad, as they sing a programme including two Liszt compositions alongside pieces by twentiethand twenty-first century composers from the Visegrád countries. In addition to Kodály and modern Polish classics, the BMC will resound with Czech and Slovak compositions, along with the works of two contemporaries from Hungary, Márton Levente Horváth and Levente Gyöngyösi. The music will flow like a river winding through several countries.

IN MEDIAS RES It is no exaggeration to say that Anita Harag has burst into the Hungarian literary scene, as shown by a whole series of prizes (Petri György, Margó) and scholarships, but most of all the success of her first volume of short stories published by Magvető in 2019, Évszakhoz képest hűvösebb [Rather Cool For the Time of the Year]. Harag’s stories feature familiar situations seen from unexpected viewpoints, placing the reader immediately in the story: one character tries to hold their own in a multi national without the necessary language skills, another tries to tidy up his father’s house after he dies, someone tries to talk to her uncommunicative grandmother. At this event we can meet the inventive writer, who confidently handles her forms and boldly compacts her message, someone for whom the evening’s venue holds a personal memory: ‘For me the Müpa building represents the world before Covid, when I still went to work in the Infopark—I always looked at Müpa as I arrived in the morning and went home in the evening.’

14. 10. 2021, 7.30 pm Budapest Music Center – Concert Hall

SPOTLIGHT ON GEORGES APERGHIS Concert by the Péter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation

TEENAGER, YOUNG MAN, FOREVER YOUNG

14. 10. 2021, 7.30 pm Müpa Budapest – Béla Bartók National Concert Hall / Festival Theatre

The programme features the 17-year-old Richard Strauss, two contemporary classics, and the Eötvös Foundation’s mentorees for this year. The performing forces of the 1881 Wind Serenade are also used in new compositions by Balázs Kecskés D. and Francisco Domínguez, and along with these two world premieres, the evening also features the first Hungarian performance of a recent work by the soul and eponym of the Foundation, and one by Georges Aperghis, a Greek composer who lives in France and loves to experiment. Péter Eötvös’s double bass concerto Aurora, premiered two years ago in Berlin, conjures up the memorable visual experience of the aurora borealis, which he saw flying over Alaska in 1971. The soloist in the piece will be Matthew McDonald, who also played in the Berlin premiere in 2019.

14. 10. 2021, 2 pm Akvárium Klub

5TH HUNGARIAN MUSIC VIDEO CONTEST

ELECTROACOUSTICA 2020 NIGHT-TIME DIP IN THE SOUNDWAVES Electroacoustic music is a fairly young genre, which emerged only in the middle of the twentieth century. But of course we can also call it a tradition of many decades, which at the moment is experiencing a renaissance, mainly among composers of electronic ambient music. Fans of avant-garde music will be especially pleased that this basically experimental genre received new impulses thanks to the electroacoustic category of Müpa’s 2020 Composition Competition. The broader public, on the other hand, will have an excellent opportunity to get to know this truly exciting world. During this concert we will hear six prizewinning compositions, which show a broad range of the technologies and aesthetic approaches electroacoustic music uses to create unexpected effects. The world premieres to be heard in successive halls of Müpa Budapest were composed by Gyula Pintér, Mihály Kádár, Bálint Baráth, Jázon Márk Kováts, Ákos Janca, and Gábor Erdélyi. The evening includes music made from natural sounds, improvisation, a sounding process created by the musical transformation of graphical surfaces, and the illusion of spatiality achieved through the moving of sound masses. Aural delights of a highly unusual kind.

VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR Buggles’ 1979 hit referred to the first wave of video clips that Music TV and others bombarded the public with in the 1980s and 1990s. Since then, music has wandered from the TV screen to our telephones, and this title has been twisted repeatedly, like ‘digital music killed the video star.’ Only it hasn’t: even in Hungary hun dreds of video clips are made every year, and the Hungarian Music Video Contest, now held for the fifth time, aims to give you a hand and show you the most compelling ones. What’s more, you can feast your eyes on the big screen. To this day, a video clip is the projection of the performer’s image, indispensable in a career. The creators of the best clips go on to find work in the film and creative sectors—as previous prize-winners will testify.

1. 2. 3. 4.

Photo: Péter Rákossy / Hungarian State Opera Photo: Bartek Barczyk Photo: Gábor Valuska Photo: Kai Bienert

Photo: Luca Di Bartolo

AGELESS CARMEN After an absence of ten years, the Compañía Antonio Gades is coming back to Budapest at last. The flamenco they bring is no cheap tourist attraction, but an authentic, poignant stage performance that bears witness to a profound understanding of the genre. Spanish dancer and choreographer Antonio Gades made a mark when in 1983 his Carmen was first filmed and won an Oscar, then in the same year set off on tour to conquer stages all over the world.

The story of a Gypsy girl working in a cigarette factory spans eras and cultures: Prosper Mérimée’s 1845 short story was adapted by Georges Bizet exactly 30 years later into one of the most performed operas in the world. As one critic put it: the story of the Spanish girl has become a French myth, in which men are ensnared by Carmen’s sensual beauty. In these adaptations, Spanish culture is but a mise en scène, with broad stereotypes of women and men, love, and passion. When in 1983 film director Carlos Saura and choreographer Antonio Gades made their Carmen film, soon in the running for the Oscar for best foreign film, and the Palme D’or, a new chapter opened in its reception. This joint creation by Saura and Gades is radically different from its predecessors in two fundamental respects. First, the story is given a frame: the conceit is that a choreographer is looking for the best dancer for his upcoming Carmen. Naturally, he falls in love with his chosen dancer, and from then on the original story and the passionate events in the dance studio become inextricably intertwined. The other great innovation is the groundbreaking flamenco dancing of Gades, which is born before our very eyes, between the full-length mirrored walls of the dance studio. It’s important to understand the significance of the latter: flamenco plays a decisive role in how the character of the Gypsy girl, who on the opera stage is often simplistically portrayed as a demonic seductress, becomes here a complex, nuanced, tormented figure. Gades’s Carmen (to use the choreographer’s own words) is no man-eater, but a free woman who, in her infinite desire for freedom, chooses death rather than sacrifice her principles.

Saura and Gades’s reading of Carmen, which won immediate critical and audience acclaim, moved from the screen to the stage. The first audience to applaud the production (made practically in tandem with the film) was that of the Théâtre de Paris on 17 May 1983. The stage version included not only iconic scenes from the film, but also many of the same performers. Gades himself took to the stage, but the most emblematic figure in the performance was naturally Cristina Hoyos in the title role: shortly after the premiere the largest Spanish daily paper carried a long portrait of her entitled Carmen’s Name is Cristina. Before going into the reasons for its continuing success, it is worth spending a few words on one of the greatest choreographers and dancers of the 20th century, Antonio Gades. A man who has conquered the dance stages of the world, he came from far away, very far indeed: he was born in 1936 in Alicante, and the first decades of his life were defined by hardship and helping his family who were in need. He owes his career as a dancer to constant hunger: one neighbour suggested the boy start to study dance, and a few years later he was already a successful performer. He encountered many different styles before realizing with surprise at the end of his 20s that his true home is the gleaming black lines of García Lorca, and the magical genre of the world of Andalucia, in other words: flamenco. And while Gades was dancing much, in many different styles, in the 1960s he started to develop his own unmistakable style of choreography. He conducted research into the roots of flamenco and the different meanings of the genre, while rejecting outright the reduction of the form to a tourist trap, an approach he called prostitution. On his long journey he also borrowed from the sister arts, literature and painting. As an artist and as a private citizen he held to the same, noble principles: as a protest against Franco’s dictatorship in the mid-1970s he retired from a career in dance, but after the fall of the regime he was happy to take on the directorship of the Spanish National Ballet. The 1980s was about an epochal meeting: Antonio Gades and film director Carlos Saura first worked together on the filmic adaptation of the choreographer’s 1974 Blood Wedding in 1981. The true significance of the film lay in how flamenco, which had long been considered merely of local interest, acquired fans all over the world. A continuation was almost expected: in 1983 came Carmen, first on the big screen, then on the stage, and then in 1986 El amor brujo [Mad Love], which completed the trilogy, also had across-the-board success in the theatre three years later under the title Fuego [Fire]. Gades’s own ensemble grew into one that tours the world, and a few months before his death in 2004 he set up a foundation to keep this mission alive. So Gades’s productions are with us today, and they have remained unscathed over time. ‘One hundred years ago, a woman like this could not really be understood. Today, the figure of Carmen is valid in its totality... I think men, especially Spanish men, have many shortcomings. They want to possess a woman, and they’re unable to understand that sometimes we just want to be left alone.’ The feelings of Cristina Hoyos,

17 and 18. 10. 2021, 7 pm Müpa Budapest – Festival Theatre

COMPAÑÍA ANTONIO GADES: CARMEN Carmen: Esmeralda Manzanas Don José: Álvaro Madrid Torreádor: Jairo Rodríguez Férj: Miguel Ángel Rojas Featured dancers: Cristina Carnero, María José López, María Nadal, Virginia Guiñales, Raquel Soblechero, Ana del Rey, Ana Pardo, Miguel Lara, Antonio Ortega, Pepe Vento, Santiago Herranz, Ángel Navarro Featured musicians: Alfredo Tejada, Enrique Bermúdez „Piculabe”, Juan Carrasco „Juañares” – voice, Antonio Solera, Basilio García – guitar Dramaturgy: Antonio Gades, Carlos Saura (based on Prosper Mérimée’s novella) Production design: Carlos Saura Set: Antonio Saura Costumes: Carmen Sánchez Choreographer, director: Antonio Gades, Carlos Saura

the shining Carmen of the stage version, chime in with Gades’s ideas about the girl. Her Carmen is bold, challenging, and uninhibited in the best sense of the word: a noble, self-aware being that men cannot understand. After the world premiere in Paris one French critic noted: Mérimée brought Carmen to France, but Gades has taken her back to Spain. This legendary dance theatre production, which after ten years can again be seen in Budapest, threw the world of dance into turmoil. It was the first time flamenco had told a story, and a strong one at that: the ancient, authentic dance and ballet, the live music and the recorded excerpts from the opera, together with the exceptional power of the dancers, created a sure-fire explosive mixture. Even today, detonation is guaranteed. Tamás Jászay

AN ORCHESTRA IN A SINGLE INSTRUMENT FRANZ LISZT AT THE ORGAN STOPS

According to a newspaper article, the young Franz Liszt called the organ the ‘pope of instruments’, and was later drawn to it on account of its range of colour, comparable to that of a symphony orchestra, and its role in sacred music. During his wandering years he became a pioneer of the instrument, even if he gave only one official solo recital in his life, and wrote a total of forty works for the organ.

Though the black and white keys make them look quite similar, the organ and the piano are very different instruments. The former (the older of the two) works with a pump blowing air through pipes, and the note is sustained with the same volume as long as the key is depressed. The latter instrument, in its modern form developed in the nineteenth century, works with a hammer mechanism, where every note is sounded diminuendo, i.e. the string rings ever quieter once the hammer has risen after the strike. They require different techniques, and present different challenges, and hardly anyone is master of them both. Franz Liszt never claimed to be an organist, but sometimes he taught seated at the organ, and he was interested not only by the queen of instruments, but everything that was a modern keyboard instrument at the time, from the piano-orgue to the harmonium. Organ works comprise a small but not insignificant part of his œuvre: around forty of his seven hundred works are for organ, of which only ten were originally written for the instrument, while a score are transcriptions of his own works, and a dozen were written by other composers for other instruments. An insubstantial body of works? Not if we consider that this is more than Berlioz’s, Wagner’s, or Schumann’s output, and in this era the organ was not the most popular of instruments. From the mid-eighteenth century ideals about music changed: virtuosos appeared, profane themes abounded, and the object of music was human feeling, rather than divine devotion. ‘Contemporary organs could not keep pace with this change, and organs could not be removed from the milieu of the church,’ explains organist Balázs Szabó, lecturer at the Liszt Academy and an organ restoration expert. ‘Organ building began to catch up only in 1845–50, and these were the years Liszt wrote his first works for the instrument.’ The composer set about the task with characteristic ingenuity and hitherto unknown inventiveness, dreaming of an orchestral sound and intent on showing the instrument’s grandiosity and range of colour, in the vein of the visionary poetry of the age. THE PATH TO GREAT ORGAN WORKS The first written record of Liszt sitting at an organ dates from 1836, when he tried the excellent instrument built by Mooser in the Cathedral of St Nicholas in Fribourg, Switzerland. In the words of one ear-witness: ‘The theme, developed with the brio of genius, became a majestic hymn, and the artist used every means the splendid instrument put at his disposal to conclude his improvisation.’ Over the next few years he had the opportunity to play in many churches, from Paris to Riga and Moscow, where he gave his only official organ solo recital. In 1845 in the La Major Cathedral, Marseille, he improvised a ‘majestic symphony’ based on the Divine Comedy, presumably presaging material from the Dante Sonata. His interest was deepened by Mendelssohn, under whose influence he included Bach organ works in his piano repertoire, and the example of Mendelssohn and Schumann spurred him to but a threemanual piano with sixteen registers and pedal keys, which many organists used at the time to practise at home.

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Because Liszt was not trained as an organist (his footwork was clumsier than that of his colleagues), and he did not perform organ works by other composers in public. What is more, his first (and probably best) piece was premiered by a pupil, Alexander Winterberger. Liszt composed Ad nos after Meyerbeer’s opera The Prophet, using harmonies that would later be heard in the music of Bartók and Messiaen. The volume and proportions of the piece probably shocked contemporary listeners. Liszt took the organ out of the church and into the concert hall. ‘He was the first who really used an organ like an orchestra,’ says Balázs Szabó. ‘He highlighted voices, created constantly changing textures, and this perfectly matched the essence of the instrument. This is what makes his three great organ works, Ad nos, the B-A-C-H Prelude and Fugue, and Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen pioneering and unique.’ So delighted was Liszt with the possibilities afforded by the instrument that he demanded they be exploited as far as possible. According to one story, he cited the registrations of his great predecessor, Bach, to organist A. W. Gottschalg, in Weimar, saying: ‘In terms of technique, it is totally satisfying … but where is the spirit?’ He went on to chide him more explicitly: ‘When you are playing on a three-manual instrument, why should the other two manuals be ignored?’ Following 1861, Liszt’s life and art changed direction. After two of his children died tragically young, and his intention to marry Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein was thwarted, he left Weimar for Rome. A few years later, after receiving tonsure (he took minor orders), he would only give concerts and lessons for free, and the transcendental aspects of his music grew stronger. The organ works composed in this period were informed by the stylized simplicity of the musical reform of the Catholic church, the ideals of what was known as Cecilianism: the legacy of Gregorian melodies, modal harmonies, and unusually for Liszt, a lack of ornamentation (Évocation, Salve Regina, Rosario, Via Crucis). It was at this time that he met two great organist-composers, Camille Saint-Saëns and César Franck, and he was generous with his praise at hearing the latter’s improvisation. Though he lived as a priest, he was still most interested by the piano—indeed there was a rumour that he had rolled his piano to Pope Pius IX in Rome, as David took his lute to the court of Saul.

WITH INSTRUMENT MAKERS IN PARIS, AND IN HUNGARIAN CHURCHES Liszt was undoubtedly fascinated by the possibilities inherent in new keyboard instruments. He had only one complaint of the piano: that it could not ‘sing’ like the violin or the organ. ‘Liszt was always looking for the ideal instrument, and it was partly at his instigation that the Alexandre instrument factory in Paris created the pianoorgue, which combines a harmonium with an upright piano. He owned two of these combined instruments, one of which he used in Weimar and is now held in Vienna, and the other was in his onetime apartment in Nádor utca [Budapest],’ says Balázs Szabó, who eight years ago took part in restoring the Budapest piano-orgue, which the maestro left to the Liszt Academy. (With keen marketing acumen, from 1854 the Paris company sold the instrument as a Piano-Liszt). Perhaps this is why a harmonium is used in Liszt’s two great oratorios, Christus and The Legend of St. Elizabeth: unlike the organ, whose tone is inflexible, the former makes it possible to effect flexible dynamic transitions. Liszt attended several organ inaugurations in Hungarian churches, as evidenced by reports and plaques. He supported the renovation of the organ in his birthplace, Doborján; in Esztergom he wrote a mass for the consecration of the 3530-pipe Mooser organ;

he also had time for the inauguration of the instrument in the Hermina Chapel, which he played several times and for which he wrote a new work. He played on the organs in Pécs cathedral, in the churches in Fót and Nagycenk, he was president of the committee that judged the organists competing for the World Fair in London in 1871, and in his old age, in 1883 he and Ferenc Erkel decided on the organ destined for the Liszt Academy building in Sugár út in Budapest. ‘The perfectly made organ of the Hungarian Royal Academy of Music gave a finely resounding proof of his skill,’ he wrote appreciatively to Antal Dangl and son, the organ builders from Arad, after the inauguration, at which Hans Koessler played from The Legend of St Elizabeth. One of Liszt’s last compositions is an 1886 transcription of one of Mozart’s best-known motets. He added in a note: ‘God’s infinite mercy and the fulfilment of prayer answer [man’s wretchedness] and sing in Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus. This concerns the sublimest of mysteries, the one which reveals to us Love triumphant over Evil and Death.’ A CONCERT TO ENTICE EVEN LISZT We encounter the organ several times at the Liszt Fest: on 8 October at the opening concert the Coronation Mass is played by an organ and violin in place of the orchestra, and the following day in the Inner City Franciscan Church Mónika Kecskés and László Deák play the organ. On 10 October, the multiply talented Martin Sturm, who is also a composer and jazz musician, gives a concert in the St Teresa of Avila Parish Church, and in line with the tradition of the instrument, he will also improvise. One of the prime events of the Liszt Fest is an organ concert which in all probability would have enticed even Liszt himself. On 11 October Balázs Szabó will play Liszt’s organ works and transcriptions of pieces he composed for other forces (including Fountains of the Villa d’Este, originally written for piano), on the Voit organ in the Liszt Academy. The Romantic-style instrument in the Great Hall of the Academy was inaugurated three years ago, on Liszt’s birthday, after ten years of work. ‘This instrument is capable of sounds I have not experienced elsewhere, and I did not even dare imagine. Its uniqueness lies in its naturalness.’ When I asked him to explain how this manifests itself, he called my attention to two simple criteria. ‘A clarinet or bassoon sounds different in different registers: in a high register it is less certain, in the low it is sturdier. The same is true of the Voit organ. But you can also hear, just like with a piano, whether the musician plays from the arm, or merely strokes the manual with their fingertips. I hope that through this performance I can also shape the listeners’ notions of the organ.’

8. 10. 2021, 8 pm Matthias Church

THE OPENING CONCERT OF THE LISZT FEST Works by Allegri, Liszt and Mozart Featuring: Slávka Zámečníková [4], Atala Schöck [4], Peter Berger [4], Artur Janda [4] – voice, Ádám Banda [4] – violin, Karol Mossakowski [2, 3, 4] – organ, Kodály Choir Debrecen [1, 3, 4] Conductor: Zoltán Kocsis-Holper [1, 3, 4] 9. 10. 2021, 8 pm Inner City Franciscan Church

MÓNIKA KECSKÉS AND LÁSZLÓ DEÁK’S ORGAN RECITAL Works by J. S. Bach and Liszt 10. 10. 2021, 8 pm St Teresa of Avila Parish Church

MARTIN STURM’S ORGAN RECITAL Works by Liszt 11. 10. 2021, 7.30 pm Liszt Academy – Grand Hall

BALÁZS SZABÓ’S ORGAN RECITAL Works by Liszt

Máté Csabai

1. and 2. Source: Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum and Research Centre

WHO OWNS FRANZ LISZT? 20

According to tradition, in the ancient world eight cities vied for the title of Homer’s birthplace. In Hungary a whole series of towns in the Great Plain claim to be the place that poet Sándor Petőfi first came into the world. Rights to Franz Liszt (or Liszt Ferenc) are claimed by half of Europe in one form or another—partly as a result of different interpretations of details of his biography, and partly due to changes of state boundaries during the 20th century. Apropos of the Liszt conference held between 18 and 22 October at the Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum and Research Centre, let us take a look at which nations cling most dearly to the intellectual legacy of this worldfamous composer, and where research into Liszt’s œuvre is conducted most intensively.

A BIRTHPLACE THAT CROSSED THE BORDER Hungary’s western neighbour bases its own Liszt cult primarily on family links, and on the fact that the house where the composer was born, in Doborján (Raiding) is now in the state of Burgenland (Austria). When Franz Liszt was born, however, in 1811, this was part of the county of Sopron (Hungary). The composer’s mother was Austrian, and his father’s ancestors were also from the Burgenland region. In this German-speaking family, the grandfather still wrote the family name with an S, and it was the composer’s father who magyarized this to Liszt. Even as a child, Franz Liszt began the wandering lifestyle that would continue to characterize his later life. His father Ádám Liszt was steward of the Esterházy estate, and, recognizing his son’s talent after successful concerts in Sopron and Pozsony, had him study first with Carl Czerny and Antonio Salieri in Vienna, and then sent him to Paris. PARIS, THE FOUNT OF INTELLECT The years of his childhood and adolescence spent in the French capital made an impression on Liszt that lasted his entire life. He was twelve when he arrived in Paris, where countless young artists went to train, as it was customary at the time. Alongside his musical studies, he encountered the defining artistic currents and figures of the period, and made life-long friends, such as Chopin. Paris’s lively intellectual milieu gave an insight into not only the music life of the time, but also the literary and art scenes, and Liszt even had a chance to acquaint himself with the current social and political ideas. French was to remain the language he was most comfortable expressing himself in. The French claim Franz Liszt because his wide-ranging erudition and his open French intellectuality is attributed to his young years in Paris.

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THE LATEST RESEARCH TO BE PRESENTED IN BUDAPEST The speakers at the conference linked to the Liszt Festival are authors of some of the latest studies on Liszt. They will give an overview of their books and research findings in the four-day event which concludes on 22 October, Franz Liszt’s birthday. The conference on musicology and music history gives a survey of new developments and trends in Liszt research. On 18 and 19 October the papers will focus on Liszt and his connections to Hungary, and the Hungarian music history of the second half of the 19th century. Dr Zsuzsanna Domokos and her colleagues are currently trying to map out what Liszt meant to contemporary Hungary, what influence his art had on the musical culture in the country, and how music life here affected the composer. Accordingly, at the centre of the Hungarian theme of the conference is the relationship between Liszt and developments in contemporary culture. Related to this is the temporary exhibition (also accessible online) in the Liszt Ferenc Museum, entitled Visiting Liszt’s Home on the Sugár út, where we get a glimpse into the last years of the composer’s life.

THE WEIMAR DREAM UNRAVELS, THE RETURN TO HUNGARY His childhood abroad was followed by an even more animated youth. A virtuoso concert pianist, Liszt travelled throughout the whole of Europe. No wonder the folk of Weimar are so proud that of all his homes, it was there that he dwelt for longest. Liszt lived in the German town from 1842 to 1861, and he planned to turn it into an intellectual and cultural centre, but by the end of the 1850s he conceded that he was unable to realize these plans, and moved to Rome. From 1861 he resided mainly in Rome, then towards the end of his life he divided his time between Budapest, Weimar, and Rome. In spite of his national feeling being aroused only later in his life, he was proud to identify as Hungarian. Although he did not speak Hungarian, he read and understood the language, and attended lectures. He wanted his son to learn Hungarian. HOW IS THE INTERNATIONAL LISZT RESEARCH NETWORK STRUCTURED? The centre of research into the life and work of Franz Liszt is currently located in Hungary, more precisely, the Liszt Ferenc Museum and the related Research Centre. This institution has its own collection, including books and scores Liszt kept in Budapest, manuscripts of his works, letters, photographs, artworks, and other documents. The Hungarian Liszt Society coordinates the activity of Liszt societies both here and abroad. As well as the research institute in Raiding (Doborján), Austria, where Liszt was born, the Hungarian research centre maintains closest contact with institutes in Eisenstadt (Kismarton), Geneva, Weimar, Eschweiler, Bayreuth, Bologna, Wrocław, Twickenham, and Vinkeveen in the Dutch province of Utrecht. According to museologist Dr Zsuzsanna Domokos, director of the Liszt Ferenc Research Centre in Budapest, the researchers in Utrecht and Bologna are the most active, but the French are also very strong. Smallscale, sporadic initiatives are also commonplace.

On 20 and 21 October, the most prestigious figures in international Liszt research will give an account of their latest findings. We have a choice of lectures by nine guest specialists, one of which is the eagerly awaited talk by Alan Walker, author of a three-volume work on the life of Liszt, and there will be Dutch, Italian, German and Irish speakers as well. The talks are accompanied by concerts, as well as book launches and CD releases. FOCUS ON NEWLY DISCOVERED LISZT MANUSCRIPTS Increasingly rare though they are, sometimes it is still possible to discover an unknown Liszt manuscript. Not long ago, autograph copies of some of his late works were found, and in 2016 these passed from the collection of a former Hungarian publisher to the ownership of the Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum. Liszt sent the finalized manuscript to his Hungarian publisher Nándor Táborszky, but did not ask for the originals to be returned: thus these autographs remained in his property. These comprise seven bundles of documents containing entire works by Liszt, though some of the works can be found in several versions in the manuscript; this autograph collection consists of a total of ten manuscripts in Liszt’s own hand. We can read a scholarly account of this discovery in the English language facsimile edition, which included studies and was published in July 2020 as Newly Discovered Treasures: Unknown Manuscripts of Published Works by Liszt. The main thrust of the research was to gauge the extent to which the new sources change the ideas we have formed of the works, and how far they extend our knowledge of them. The book will be launched as part of the Liszt Fest. The director of the Liszt Ferenc Research Centre also pointed out one considerable difficulty in Liszt scholarship: documents related to the composer may appear on the art object market of several European countries, and due to keen international interest they are auctioned at exorbitantly high prices. Although the Art Object Inspectorate can declare an object protected (non‑exportable) if it relates to Hungarian cultural history and has been in Hungary for at least fifty years, tracking the changes in ownership, especially in the case of items that pass to private collectors, is tricky. Consequently, researchers often lose track of valuable documents, one prime example being Liszt’s copious correspondence, which has yet to be surveyed in its entirety.

18–19. 10. 2021, 10 am Old Academy of Music

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LISZT AND HIS HUNGARIAN CONTEMPORARIES IN THE LIGHT OF HUNGARY’S CULTURAL HISTORY 21–22. 10. 2021, 10 am Old Academy of Music

NEW ADDITIONS TO THE WORLD OF LISZT

Zsuzsa Borbély

1. and 2. Source: Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum and Research Centre

14–17. 10. 2021 Várkert Bazár

18. 10. 2021, 7.30 pm Párisi Nagy Áruház – Lotz Hall

MARGÓ LITERARY FESTIVAL AND BOOK FAIR

DANTE 700 Concert by the Hungarian National Choir 2.

TEN YEARS OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE This year the Margó Literary Festival and Book Fair cele brates its 10th anniversary, and in August one event was already held, transferred from Budapest to Zala county. As is its custom, Margó opens towards the sister arts again, particularly music: there will be performances by Klasszik Lasszó, Magashegyi Underground with a contemporary poetry project, and the Csík Band debuts its settings of Krisztián Grecsó’s poems for children. But the focus is naturally on literature, and there are launches of new books by Ádám Bodor, Vilmos Csányi, János Háy, László Földényi F., László Kollár-Klemencz, Béla Markó, Krisztián Nyáry, Márton Simon, László Szilasi, and Krisztina Tóth. On the world literature stage will be guest writers Deborah Feldman, Jennifer Teege, Alex Schulman, Jón Kalman Stefánsson, Sigríður Hagalín Björnsdóttir, Gaëlle Josse, and Catalan Irene Solà. The Margó Prize for best first publications will be awarded for the seventh time.

16. 10. 2021, 8 pm Liszt Academy – Grand Hall

LISZT AND SACRALITY REFLECTIONS ON LISZT’S SACRED WORKS Franz Liszt is one of the most important figures in nineteenth-century Romanticism, whose extraordinary productivity also found expression in a sacred music whose idiom was unlike that of the era. Liszt, who was a committed believer, sought new stimuli and drew inspiration from sources as diverse as Gypsy music and the church music of the Middle Ages. His own sacred music was as much influenced by the liturgical legacy, the Gregorian chant, as by the religious harmonies of the Renaissance Orlando di Lasso and the Baroque Johann Sebastian Bach. Liszt took the earlier characteristics of sacred music and placed them in a different musical context, his own musical mysticism, and the concert Liszt and Sacrality places these in the context of a special programme, which pro vides a meeting place for many genres. Organ works, improvised movements, folk music, and religious chants shed light on one another and on Liszt, at this recital built around the duo of László Fassang and Balázs Szokolay Dongó. Fassang, an organist, and Szokolay Dongó, who plays folk wind instruments, have been playing together for years, and the basis for this joint production is improvisation, in which they are joined by Mátyás Bolya on plucked folk instruments and singer Sára Bolyki. The former is known for being creative in his application of folk music gestures, and the latter as a vocalist who boldly experiments in the borderland between folk music and jazz.

IL SOMMO POETA Dante died in 1321, seven hundred years ago, and in Italy the conquest of his œuvre over world literature is concisely referred to by the brief phrase La fortuna di Dante. To this day composers are unable to wrench themselves from his influence, as shown by a concert given by the Hungarian National Choir, with a programme made entirely (barring one exception) of works inspired by Dante, by contemporary composers from Hungary and abroad. The compositions of Miklós Csemiczky, Barna Szabó, Dimitri Scarlato from Rome, and János Vajda will be per formed for the first time. As part of the concert whose conductor is Csaba Somos, Károly Mécs (who was awarded the Kossuth Prize this year) recites a few sonnets, in an homage to the ‘sommo Poeta.’

1. 2. 3. 5. 6.

Photo: Gábor Valuska Photo: Anita Veres Photo: Szilvia Csibi / Müpa Budapest Photo: Zsófia Raffay Photo: Tamás Végh

20. 10. 2021, 7.30 pm Budapest Music Center – Concert Hall

24. 10. 2021, 7 pm Müpa Budapest – Festival Theatre

HUNGARIAN JAZZ 2020 The Gala Concert of the Small Jazz Formation Category of Müpa’s Composition Competition

THE JAZZ COMPETITION COMES TO LIFE When a competition is ‘heard’ that’s when we find out if it was worth organizing. This gala concert is such an occasion, featuring many interesting pieces written for the small jazz formation category of Müpa Budapest’s Composition Competition. And of course like all similar initiatives, the aim is for something lasting to be born, something that will enrich the given genre. The evening features six world premieres, works by Rezső Jónás, Zsolt Kaltenecker, Dezső Oláh, Krisztián Oláh, Dániel Ferenc Szabó, and Árpád Tzumo. This is an event that showcases different generations working along side one another, ‘old hands’ and ‘new entries,’ with works for formations varied in both size and composition, from a piece for solo keyboard with electronics, to the septet. An excellent chance to discover something that is guaranteed to be new in these familiar musical worlds, and to stray into areas we have never been before.

23. 10. 2021, 7.30 pm Müpa Budapest – Béla Bartók National Concert Hall

THE SOUNDS OF FREEDOM Gábor Hollerung and the Budafok Dohnanyi Orchestra

THE HUNGARIAN MOSES A boundlessly popular, ever-successful piece of the symphony repertoire; a ‘symphonic poem’ by a young genius that proves to be atypical; the world premiere of a Hungarian contemporary work with a choir, vocal soloists and a prose narrator: find all this and more at the concert of the Budafok Dohnanyi Orchestra. Les Préludes matches surprisingly well with the Kossuth Symphony, which celebrates the ideal of Hungarian national independence and its nineteenth- century hero, lauded as the Hungarian Moses. Yet these works, by Franz Liszt and Béla Bartók respectively, are rarely heard in juxtaposition. The conjuring up in sym phonic form of Romantic grappling with fate, the desire for freedom and the struggle fought for it, are followed by a new cantata by famed tuba player Roland Szentpáli, an award winner of Müpa Budapest’s 2020 Composition Competition. Szentpáli chose as the basis for his composition the poem To the Hungarians by Dániel Berzsenyi, and the use of a classic of Hungarian literature, one that is also a basic text for ruthlessly strict national self-criticism, was both bold and felicitous. The premiere of the cantata is in the hands of Gábor Hollerung, who is very committed to the genesis of con temporary Hungarian compositions.

DANUBE ART ENSEMBLE: BEAUTIFUL MEZŐSÉG – PREMIERE TO TRANSYLVANIA, BY DANCE Formed in 1957, the Danube Art Ensemble’s new production conjures up a rich folk culture, a legacy of music and dance from a region of Transylvania whose ethnically mixed hillside villages have long been particularly favoured by those who research and nurture folklore. The juxtaposition of Hungarians, Romanians, Gypsies, and Saxons, their mutual influences and symbiosis makes Mezőség particularly interesting, for composers (Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály, László Lajtha), architects (Károly Kós), ethnographers, and choreographers (György Martin, Sándor Tímár, Ferenc Novák). Many have travelled there to do fieldwork, and the Kossuth Prize winning ethnographer Zoltán Kallós was born, lived, and died there. This is where the Danube Art Ensemble now takes us, with help from singer Andrea Navratil and the Göncöl Band. Dancing all along the way, of course.

Photo: Márton Perlaki

DAVID YENGIBARIAN

CAUCASIAN CULTURE COMES TO BUDAPEST In autumn there’s no need to budge an inch from the city to encounter unusual cultures. For the fourth time, the PONT Festival brings the inhabitants and traditions of unknown regions closer to us. This time, the guests of these events will be two countries lying on the easternmost reaches of Europe: Georgia and Armenia will fill the festival’s new venue, the Hungarian National Museum’s Garden, with their customs. What do they have in common? Not just growing pomegranates!

We have heritages that are passed on to us not only through family links, but because we learn about them in our lives. This is true of the varied list of intangible cultural heritage created by UNESCO, which contains everything unseen to the eye, but felt by the heart. Music, gastronomy, and inherited and preserved skills. No wonder one important motive in creating the PONT Festival was to be able to encounter the treasures of distant regions: All the steps a dancer makes, and all that is made or played by hand. Georgian and Armenian are languages that look back on a past of thousands of years; the spoken word deriving from olden times is coupled with a special writing system, which instead of the familiar visual rhythm of Roman and Cyrillic letters, give the impression of a wonderful calligraphy. And where can we find these events? This year the PONT Festival takes the form of an open-air festival, and will take over the Garden of the National Museum.

THE NEW VENUE: THE MUSEUM GARDEN

We have records of the history of the plot of the Hungarian National Museum going back to the mid-18th century: in the 1750s, Ferenc Klobusiczky, Archbishop of Kalocsa, built his palace on the west side, and had a Baroque garden designed behind the building. The appearance of the Hungarian National Museum’s Garden (affectionately referred to in Budapest as the ‘Muzi’) was significantly altered first by the construction of the beautiful classicist palace of the National Museum, begun in 1837 and still standing today, and then by the floods that afflicted Pest the following year. Today it is a unique public park in the Palace District. Famous for its trees, shady glades, and open spaces, it is calling out for an event just like PONT.

9. 10. 2021, 10 am National Museum's Garden

PONT FESTIVAL Breathing heritage

One eagerly awaited visitor is the Quintet Urmuli, along with the accordionist David Yengibarian, who was born in Armenia but is settled in Hungary. Make sure you take a look at the former band’s instruments: you might never have seen a kamancheh (a bowed string instrument played on the knees), or a duduk, which is a defining element of this music, though it is nothing more than a simple reed pipe.

THE SECRET OF GEORGIAN WINE

Why are Georgian wines, made with the kvevri technique, so special? The wine is aged in clay vessels, which are buried in the cellars, with an archaic skill passed down from father to son. The quality of the kvevri is largely determined by where it is buried. In West Georgia, where vines are grown on moist, fertile soil, and harvested in late autumn, the kvevri are placed in dry sand in the marani (or cellar), then covered with a wooden or wickerwork lid. The word kvevri means vase or jug, and using it to produce wine is the oldest known method of wine production, so old in fact that archaeologists have found evidence from 8000 years ago in the territory of Georgia with traces of wine dried onto the terracotta. No wonder UNESCO put this on the list of intangible cultural heritage. There is of course the risk of there being nobody left to put the time and trouble into producing it, so taste it while you can. And what grapes is it made from? Georgian wine growers and makers are extremely proud of the many varieties in the country, and at the same time they are most conservative: they believe that the varieties common throughout the world should not be introduced into Georgian winemaking.

BUDAPEST LEGNAGYOBB TERASZA THE LARGEST TERRACE IN BUDAPEST

3 KONCERTTEREM • 3 DANCEFLOORS

AN EXPERIENCE FOR THE HEART

If you’re looking for an unusual experience, try to get to the event in time to take part in the Caucasian drum workshop, which starts at midday. People coming with children won’t be disappointed either: they’ll be able to learn about special Georgian and Armenian handicrafts. From late afternoon, there will be film screenings in the National Museum: the documentary Adila introduces us to traditional Georgian music and folk dance, while in Repülj, madár, repülj! (Fly bird, fly), Simon Broughton, editor-inchief of the world music magazine Songlines narrates the history of the Hungarian dance house movement. Two open-air exhibitions link up with the films: Ádám Balogh’s magical Caucasian photographs connect to Adila, and Béla Kása’s photos document the world of Fly bird, fly. Noémi Papp

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Photo: Bálint Hrotkó / Müpa Budapest

CONTEMPORARY TREASURE HUNTING IN THE BÁLNA An international art fair is viable if it keeps up with current trends and also shapes them. Its two most important participants are the contemporary artist and the contemporary collector, while the organizer of the fair provides an environment, inspirational both physically and intellectually, for them to meet. Over the ten-year history of Art Market Budapest, fashions and market opportunities have changed, and a new generation of Hungarian artists has reached maturity. This year, alongside Hungarians, there are Czech, Polish, and Slovak artists too: the spotlight is on the Visegrád Four countries at the market’s new venue, Bálna Budapest.

The contemporary art scene has faced great adversity over the last year and a half: online exhibitions and auctions, openings and guided shows were the creative products of the Covid pandemic, proofs of the survival instinct. But how could we expect a tangible art object to create its true effect via digital platforms? How do you know you spend your money well, if you only see a photo, painting, drawing or print on a computer monitor? In 2020, the most important classical art fair, The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) held in Maastricht, was forced to send exhibitors home just a couple of days before it opened in March, but in September 2021 it chose to go online. One of the leading contemporary photography events, Photo London, also moved into the virtual world, when in 2020 it was unable to open in the traditional manner even after being postponed. In European cities where several fairs are held, the way that the pandemic reorganized the calendar put many events into an awkward situation, but Art Market Budapest did not overlap with any other important event in Central Europe. Attila Ledényi, founder and director of Art Market Budapest, said that they exploited the opportunities of digital development effectively, and thanks to their online presence they were even able to expand the professional community they had built up during the last decade. While pandemic lockdowns and planning uncertainty mean that each long-distance journey has to be mulled over carefully, it’s an advantage to think in terms of a smaller region, Central Europe. In October about 120 exhibitors and some 500 artists from 30 countries will bring

8–10. 10. 2021, 11 am Bálna Budapest

ART MARKET BUDAPEST ART. CRAFT. REVIVAL.

several thousand works to Budapest. Players on the art market, institutions, private collectors and those buying as an investment are happy to choose upcoming markets rather than mainstream trends. This is where opportunities can be discovered; this is where you can choose, at a favourable price, from the works of artists before they make it internationally. There are plenty of such success stories in Hungary: in recent years, works by Imre Bak, Ilona Keserü, and Dóra Maurer have started to sell at considerable prices even by international standards. There is another, related trend: prestigious museums all over the world stage exhibitions and make purchases to compensate for the period in the second half of the twentieth century when they had very little information about the art world behind the Iron Curtain. This period of Hungarian art is a veritable discovery for the world: in 2017 New York’s Elizabeth Dee Gallery presented a large selection of neo-avant-garde works from Hungary from the 1960s and 1970s, and Dóra Maurer’s solo show at London’s Tate Modern was open for one and a half years. It bears witness to this keen interest that the OFF-Biennále’s team of curators have been invited to one of the most prestigious contemporary exhibitions, the Documenta in Kassel. According to Attila Ledényi, the same goes for the other countries in the Eastern bloc, which are all experiencing increasing international interest, and here Art Market Budapest aims to play the role of intermediary: ‘Consumers of culture are welcomed with high-quality content in Budapest, a city that is convenient and attractive in terms of both tourism and cultural infrastructure.’ This year the focus is on contemporary art from the Visegrád Four countries: the fair will include a conference, ‘Inside Art’, which dedicates an entire day to the topic of the Visegrad cooperation; the related events form an art festival under the name Visegrad Contemporary. This year the market has a new venue, Bálna Budapest. The director of Art Market Budapest says: ‘This building on the bank of the Danube, with its striking shape, is good not just because it is easy to get to, centrally located, in a word splendidly embedded in the fabric of the city, but its architectural features too are unique. The new venue will thus serve to reinforce the unique image of the fair and its international renown.’ Emőke Gréczi

JESSICA CARULLA LEON The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude

International contemporary art fair

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Photo: Andrea Felvégi

EDIT KLUKON DEZSŐ RÁNKI

‘YOU CAN’T LIE WHEN YOU’RE MAKING MUSIC’ IN CONVERSATION WITH EDIT KLUKON, DEZSŐ RÁNKI, AND FÜLÖP RÁNKI The internationally renowned piano duo of Edit Klukon and Dezső Ránki will be playing the four-hand versions of Franz Liszt’s symphonic poems, in a marathon series of four concerts on two consecutive days, in the composer’s former residence at the Old Academy of Music. In the same venue, a matinee concert will be given by the couple’s pianist son, Fülöp Ránki, who will play a selection from works by Liszt and SaintSaëns. What a memorable experience it promises to be: concerts by members of the Ránki family are of the highest quality. And of what should we speak in connection with the concerts, if not of Franz Liszt?

Can you recall your first experience with the music of Liszt? EDIT KLUKON: Les Préludes was one of my father’s favourite pieces, so I encountered that work as a very small child. When it was broadcast on the radio, he was always moved, and so was I. Another significant experience was when Dezső played the B minor Sonata on television. He must have been twenty then, and I was twelve. When I heard his playing, I think a lot of things fell into place: both the piece and the performance had an enormous effect on me, and ever since I’ve thought that Dezső gives the best performance of this work by Liszt, and now so does Fülöp. DEZSŐ RÁNKI: I was still very small when before my piano lesson someone played the D flat major Consolation. At first I thought it was Chopin, whose music I already knew, but then I felt the work had a much broader scale, and that basic feeling has remained every since. FÜLÖP RÁNKI: At home, ever since I was small, Liszt’s music was often in the air; my parents practised the piano concertos and the two-piano version of the Faust Symphony a lot, and from the outset this was natural to me. Another type of memory from this time is the Liszt rhapsodies that can be heard in Attila Dargay’s animated film of the tale Mattie the Goose Boy. All three of you studied at the Liszt Academy, Fülöp a few decades later. How have compulsory Liszt studies changed over the decades? DR: We didn’t play his music just because it was compulsory; everyone loved it, although mostly the best-known pieces, of course. EK: I heard the Mephisto Waltz No. 1, La Campanella, a few Paganini etudes and one or two Transcendental Etudes, and perhaps Funérailles. At the conservatoire I was encouraged to broaden my Liszt repertoire by the example of my teacher, Edit Hambalkó, who also played Liszt’s lesser-known, late works. But Liszt’s art is like a different planet: it is difficult to integrate into the repertoire, hard to incorporate. FR: When I started at the Liszt Academy I got into the habit of reaching for Liszt if I wanted to learn a new piece. Is it still the case that when people hear the name of Liszt they associate it primarily with the output of the virtuoso years, the etudes, the Hungarian rhapsodies? FR: I have the impression that the virtuoso career was a means by which Liszt ensured that thanks to his solid reputation, works that would otherwise have sank into oblivion because of their novelty or unusualness, would remain. Even in the 1830s he produced compositions nurtured in the same spirit (and often by the same means) as the late, unadorned, extremely simple pieces. It’s also unusual that he understood Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Wagner, and the others. He played works by a vast variety of composers, transcribing them, popularizing them, working with their pieces with sincere admiration and love. I don’t know of any other composer who did this to the same extent, so extensively.

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How should the average listener approach the symphonic poems? DR: Open-mindedness is key to understanding them. We sometimes wonder what Wagner or Richard Strauss would have done without these works. For instance, in the twelfth symphonic poem, Die Ideale, many basic elements of Strauss’s music can be found, and this was before Strauss was even born. EK: Liszt was interested in everything, from Etruscan vases to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, to Schiller. These symphonic poems read like an autobiography. DR: They share some common basis, but each piece is compact, unified, and radically different from the others. Liszt reworked, and recomposed these pieces, because there are countless changes in them, for instance the orchestral version of Festklänge is twenty minutes, but the piano version for four hands is only ten minutes. He altered the musical material considerably too, knowing full well how it would best sound on the piano. In many cases he wrote new subordinate parts, extra counterpoints, compared to the orchestral versions, and the results were genuine piano pieces. It’s important to point out that the designation ‘programme music’ is often used stereotypically for symphonic poems, but that’s not quite accurate, because what these represent are not stories but characters. FR: The programme helps listeners to direct their attention, and provides a hook for their imagination. I think that is why Liszt chose these topics, which moved him so deeply.

Photo: Róza Radnóti

How do you approach Liszt’s symphonic poems as performers? How far do you manage, or try, to reproduce the symphonic dimension, the timbres of different instruments, on the piano? DR: It’s not possible, nor is it necessary, to reproduce symphonic colours and characters on the piano, but it is a great help to see which instrument a particular motif or musical idea was written for. Without wanting to try and imitate the sound, we can sense Liszt’s intention better.

FÜLÖP RÁNKI

EK: In actual fact nothing has to be reproduced, because these are piano pieces. It’s a special experience to have learned all thirteen, and to work with them together, because they have such a good effect on one another: however different they may be, they help one another in the learning process, a lot of things become natural.

15. 10. 2021, 5 pm and 7.30 pm 16. 10. 2021, 5 pm and 7.30 pm Old Academy of Music – Chamber Hall

EDIT KLUKON AND DEZSŐ RÁNKI’S CONCERT SERIES

Fülöp’s solo recital places Liszt side by side with Dante, who died seven hundred years ago, and Saint-Saëns, who died one hundred years ago. It is important to read the Divine Comedy to understand the Dante Sonata? FR: When I learned the Dante Sonata, I started off by reading the Divine Comedy. Perhaps it’s not absolutely necessary, but I had a need, because of the original title: Après une lecture du Dante or After reading Dante. I think that of all the things I have read, The Divine Comedy is the loftiest work. It exudes completeness; it’s as if everything were in it. Liszt was inclined to this grandiosity too, so it’s no coincidence he was attracted to Dante. Somewhere he wrote that there was need of a Dante in music too, and perhaps he secretly hoped that he could fulfil this role. What do we know about the relationship between Liszt and Saint-Saëns? How did you select the pieces you are going to play? FR: I was daring enough to juxtapose their works because they were good friends, and respected each other, and even often played together, for instance in the two-piano version of the Dante Symphony. That’s a performance I would love to have heard! The Dante Sonata is actually an overture to the concert, and in that sense it is sepa rate from the rest of the programme. After it comes Liszt’s transcription of Saint-Saëns’ Danse macabre, and at the end I play Mephisto Waltz No. 2, which Liszt dedicated to Saint-Saëns. The Dante Sonata begins with the tritone, the diabolus in musica; this interval plays a central role in Saint-Saëns’ Danse macabre too, and with the Mephisto Waltz No. 2 the entire concert comes to an end in a cascade of tritones: this link binds the large-scale works in the programme together. Between the two pillars that follow the overture, there are smaller-scale, shorter, waltzes and mazurkas by the two composers, in alternation, sometimes conjuring up a salon atmosphere. Liszt’s moving generosity and Saint-Saëns’ naive and well-intentioned obstinacy stand in fine and productive contrast to one another, and in some way form a whole.

Liszt’s complete symphonic poems 16. 10. 2021, 11 am Old Academy of Music – Chamber Hall

FÜLÖP RÁNKI’S PIANO RECITAL Liszt: Dante Sonata (Après une lecture du Dante – Fantasia quasi Sonata) Saint-Saëns–Liszt: Danse Macabre Saint-Saëns: Mazurka No. 2 in G minor, Op. 24 Saint-Saëns: Valse nonchalante, Op. 110 Saint-Saëns: Mazurka No. 1 in G minor, Op. 21 Liszt: Mephisto Waltz No. 2 Liszt: Two Legends

EK: We (also) fell in love with each other’s playing. Music-making is a direct way of communicating in which you can’t lie. Dezső was seventy in September, and we are actually celebrating his birthday with this series of concerts. It’s a special gift from life, and a wonderful feeling to be at home cooking lunch, then going over to our practice room, and playing Hamlet or the Héroïde funèbre together, and then having a chat afterwards. Endre Tóth

What interaction is there for you between musicmaking and family links? DR: They justify and explain each another. Since we both played the piano, there was an opportunity to see what it’s like making music together. During music-making you reveal your true self, and so we found that it was no coincidence we had come together.

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MASS IN THE TIME OF ABSOLUTISM ‘This is a work I prayed rather than composed,’ said Franz Liszt of his Esztergom Mass; even as a man of the world he retained his interest in the sacred, and even in a priest’s vestments he remained a genuine grand seigneur. He could find the common language both with the representatives of the Habsburg monarchy that had crushed the Hungarian war of independence of 1848–1849, and with their Hungarian enemies. Liszt was a master at handling his contemporaries on the political fault lines of the time, and this contributed greatly to the successful reception of his opus written to consecrate a basilica in 1856.

‘You belong to music, not to the church,’ the teenage Franz Liszt was told by his father, when the boy, who was irked by the role of the ‘artist-pet’ felt the desire to join the priesthood. At the same time, Ádám Liszt did not think that worldly success and a life of profound devotion were irreconcilable, because he then encouraged his son: ‘The path of a true artist does not depart from religion— unite the two in one career.’ And sure enough, the composer’s whole life was to be marked by a close relationship to the Christian faith and the Roman Catholic Church, long before he took up minor orders in Rome in April 1865 and became a cleric. Liszt had long been preoccupied by the noble intention of renewing Catholic church music, and we know that he had the encouragement of Pope Pius IX, who hoped to have found a new Palestrina in this ‘ill-famed musician,’ and who received him at a private audience, where Liszt accompanied the holy father on the piano as he sang arias by Bellini. Although this wonderful plan never came to fruition, through his œuvre Liszt enriched sacred music with extraordinary works: oratorios and masses, organ compositions and legends for the piano, which even in profane concert halls evoke a mood of lofty devotion. One of the finest examples of the composer’s wish to be a church musician is the Esztergom Mass, which as part of the Liszt Fest will be heard in an imposing performance, at the same venue as the world premiere. However, the history of the genesis of this

22. 10. 2021, 6 pm Esztergom Cathedral work, and the social milieu in which the mass was first performed, also tells us much about how Liszt communicated with real and virtual groups whose enmity seemed implacable. He adopted an attitude of generous elegance and at times noble negligence, focussing only on the matter in hand and passing over the controversies of the day, or the era. Cathedral construction in 19th-century Hungary was known to be a lengthy business. The Budapest one, named after the first Hungarian king, St Stephen, took over fifty years to complete, and was not finished until the 20th century. The Esztergom basilica took almost as long, from 1822 to 1869, but the consecration and inaugural ceremony could be held as ‘early’ as 1856. For this occasion, planned well in advance, a ceremonial mass was requested from Liszt, who was held in high regard by János Scitovszky, the Archbishop of Esztergom. In 1846, when he was still Bishop of Pécs, he had asked Liszt to compose a mass for the inauguration of a church, so the commission, which was transferred to Esztergom, went back ten years. Liszt threw himself into the work with great ambition and gusto, and according to his own words at the time he wrote the mass ‘in nine weeks, […] full of enthusiasm and love.’ Liszt saw no problem in the fact that the clergyman (who had gained the position of archbishop in 1849 thanks to a proposal by Alexander Bach, Minister of the Interior) branded the war of independence a sin against God, the church, the ruler, and the nation. Nor was he perturbed by fact that his good friend, Baron Antal Augusz, who usefully advanced the cause of the Esztergom Mass, was at the time deputy governor in Buda. Liszt was able to stay open and warmly cordial in all directions, without a trace of selfishness: with both exiles and the powers that be; with both revolutionaries and reactionaries. It is emblematic in this regard that at the banquet following the world premiere of the Esztergom Mass and the consecration

Liszt was able to stay open and warmly cordial in all directions, without a trace of selfishness.

LISZT: ESZTERGOM MASS Featuring: Polina Pasztircsák, Dorottya Láng, Szabolcs Brickner, Gábor Bretz – voice, Hungarian Radio Choir (choirmaster: Zoltán Pad), Pannon Philharmonic Conductor: Róbert Farkas

of the basilica, the composer was seated between Count István Károlyi and Bishop Lajos Haynald. A few years back the former was still a prisoner in Olmütz and in a jail in Pest (known as the ‘New Building’), while the Bishop (later to become cardinal archbishop) refused to proclaim the decrees of Bertalan Szemere’s government. Liszt spoke easily with both of them, and remained friendly with Haynald for decades to come. But let us return to 1856, to the weeks preceding the consecration of the basilica, which for Liszt were soured somewhat by a mini press campaign in Vienna that tried to torpedo the premiere of the mass, depicting it as confusing and time-wasting Zukunftmusik (music of the future, a term with denigrating connotations). The attempt was ultimately unsuccessful, and as he arrived in Hungary, Liszt forgave, with his customary generosity, the mastermind behind the attempted coup, his old friend Count Leó Festetics, who was forever good-natured like Augusz. He was able to do so especially because the public rehearsals held in the gala hall of the National Museum were such an unequivocal success, and the composer was in any case feted in Pest-Buda. Following the premiere in Esztergom on 31 August, the mass was performed again on 4 September in Pest, in the City Centre Parish Church, and Liszt could once more sense that his father’s onetime prediction, marking out and unifying his careers, had come true. For of this performance he wrote: ‘everything was a single humble prayer to the Almighty and to the Saviour!’ Ferenc László

LISZT FEST MAGAZINE A free publication of the Liszt Fest International Cultural Festival Published by Papageno Consulting Ltd. on behalf of Müpa Budapest Founded by: Müpa Budapest Nonprofit Ltd. Csaba Káel, CEO Publisher: Managing director of Papageno Consulting Ltd. Email: szerkesztoseg@papageno.hu Editor-in-chief: Marcell Németh Publication manager: Bernadett Lukács With contributions from: Zsuzsa Borbély, Máté Csabai, Endre Dömötör, Emőke Gréczi, Tamás Jászay, Ferenc László, Fanni Molnár, Noémi Papp, András Rónai, Endre Tóth, Zoltán Végső English translation: Richard Robinson Submissions closed on: 20 September 2021 The organizers reserve the right to make changes. Liszt Fest International Cultural Festival 8–24 October, 2021 lisztfest.hu Email: info@lisztunnep.hu Telephone: +36 1 555 3000

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