Liszt Academy Concert Magazine 2013

Liszt Academy Concert Magazine

Liszt Academy Concert Magazine OCTOBER—DECEMBER 2013

Volume 1, Issue 1

OCTOBER—DECEMBER 2013

The Prime Minister ’ s Greeting

Dear Concertgoer, The Fountain of Art, a work created by Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch more than 100 years ago, can be seen on the first floor of the recently restored Liszt Academy. When you are near Liszt Ferenc Square, we suggest you take a moment to marvel at this work of art. At the centre of the composition are five graceful female figures symbolizing the five branches of the arts: painting, sculpture, architecture, literature and music. This part of the picture reflects how the four fellow arts are able to assist in the birth of music.

The editors of this publication wished to combine the different branches of art in much the same way, placing the emphasis on the universal, common noble goal of art. And the goal? An aesthetic experience. Art is destined to touch what is immortal in the soul.

When a work of art moves us, we break away from our everyday existence and stand outside time and space. This is particularly true of music, which is capable of capturing our attention and holding our spirit spellbound for hours.

Interestingly, the building is perfectly suited to how music works: the rigorous, classical forms are like harmonies created out of notes positioned with mathematical precision. The late eclectic exterior of the building hide the early 20th century splendour that is so characteristic of Art Nouveau, the groundbreaking beauty of which stirs the soul in the same way as the emotional impact of music.

The Liszt Academy is a sacred hall, a temple of the arts, which however would be merely a dramatic composition in stone and marble, columns and stairs, were it not for the fact that it is busy with students by day, and resounds to the music of masters at night. It is this content that fills with life this beautifully restored, modern building that has managed to retain its classical elements, and it is music that lifts the soul into a transcendental dimension.

The institution is not only one of the most attractive concert venues in the world but it is also a key bastion of music teaching. Young talented artists of Hungarian classical music life find the centre represents a whole repository of opportunities for both learning and performing.

Once again, this season features numerous concerts where audiences can enjoy the skills of the finest talents of the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music. The Fountain of Art shall not run dry as long as it is constantly fed, refreshed and replenished with the help of 21st century technical advances and 21st century young artists.

After many, many years the Liszt Academy has once again become worthy of the name of its founder, Ferenc Liszt. Finally, the building is with us in all its original glory, while the institution has been given a new image that stylishly combines tradition with modernity. All those who buy tickets for concerts here will no longer have to thirst for high culture: they will now receive it from the purest of sources.

© Barna Burger

Viktor Orbán Prime Minister of Hungary

TABLE OF CONTENTS

7

Concerts in October

8

Theme and Variations

12

“It is the Sacred Hall of Music to Me” Interview with Zoltán Kocsis

16

Concerts in November

20

Rational People

24

Absolute Freedom Interview with Brad Mehldau

29

Return of the genius

31

The Driving Force of Unattainable Perfection

33

Parity – interview with Károly Binder and Gusztáv Hőna

37

On the Borderland of Artwork and Ritual

40

The Cradle of Hungarian Classical Music interview Andrea Vigh

43

Masters and Disciples

52

Géza Anda – Troubadour of the Wire Cabinet

55

57

“There is always some kind of music playing in my head” Interview with Alexei Volodin Concerts in December

58

The Adventure of Reconstruction

64

The Chamber Hall to Become Grand Again

69

Turandot Teaches – Éva Marton at the Liszt Academy

75

Born Leader with No Trait of a Dictator

82

Music Made Visible – The iconographic programme of the Liszt Academy

88

The Building

94

Past-Bound Progression

97

Hungarian Folk Music Passes Test without Mentor

100

Liszt Kidz Academy Youth Programs at the Liszt Academy

106

Winning the laurels

110

Teaching locations of the Liszt Academy

111

Associated institutions of the Liszt Academy

114

The Liszt Academy presents: International Kodály Institute

115

Be There at the Beginning of a New Era! Liszt Ferenc Patrons’ Club

116

Concert Chronology

What on Earth is this?

“What on Earth is this?” a regular of the Liszt Academy might conceivably ask as they thumb through our first comprehensive publication. “And what have they done here?” they cry as they enter the transformed, much-loved building and take in the atmosphere of the familiar lights, colours, nooks and crannies in this place of memories.

Everything is subject to scrutiny: what has stayed the same and what has changed? What have they dared to touch? Well, everything it seems!

After its opening on 22 October 2013 – the 202nd anniversary of the birth of Ferenc Liszt – we are able to experience the metamorphosis of this peerless building day after day.

dr. andrás batta © Gyula Czimbal / MTI

Music is the art of transformation. No man-made medium other than music is capable of expressing with such immediacy and intimacy the transubstantiation of matter, fire and water, black and white, the incessant pursuits of life and death. Music inspired the Liszt Academy building, and the decade-long chapter of renovation, a matter of historical significance, was performed for the love of music.

The building has been transformed. The old message has been preserved, and is now reinforced by the rationality of the modern age: well thoughtout functional spaces have been established in the courtyards (a buffet and event hall), in the basement (changing rooms, audio and visual studios, an instrument storeroom), behind the stage (rooms for the stage service team) and in the roof space (technical areas). The late 19th, early 20th and 21st centuries all meet under one roof. Some places we tread into the past, some into the future; some places belong to the here and now. However, time is suspended in the Grand Hall and Chamber Hall; or to be more precise, musical time reigns supreme here.

We teach on the upper floors and stage concerts on the lower floors.

Although the appearance of in-house lifts is a sensation, it is still the stairs – figuratively speaking – that remain imperious. They lead from the classroom to the concert hall, from workshop to public approval. Gradus ad Parnassum!

Not only is the institution of the structure undergoing transformation, but also the structure of the institution. Organizing concerts is now one of the fundamental tasks of this university of music. Speaking more professionally, one can say the institution will have a dual capacity.

Teaching and culture have come as close to each other as the laughing and serious satyr heads visible on the walls of this great building. Our creed runs thus: nurture the culture of teaching and the teaching of culture.

Everyone who enters here is called on to drink deep from the spring of musical art. This symbolism is immortalized in the fresco by Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch on the first floor. Anyone can join the pilgrimage. Here, one can sense something – indeed not an inconsiderable amount – from beyond the natural world. Of course, one has to believe: there can be no transformation without belief. Music will help you believe. The music of the Liszt Academy. Once again!

Dr. András Batta President, Liszt Academy

Dear Liszt Academy, Despite his long years away from Hungary, Sir Georg Solti’s years as a student at the Liszt Academy greatly influenced his life. He never forgot what he had learnt from his professors and I know he felt constantly indebted to them for the success he was later to enjoy. The Liszt Academy was his temple, the professors the Gods.

Antal Dorati, conductor and friend of Solti, gave him a set of red pencil portraits of their professors Bartók, Kodály, Leo Weiner, etc. which have always remained in Solti’s studio, together with his degree certificate from the Academy, a most beautiful example of graphic art inscribed with the name Solti György, June 6, 1934.

Bartók and Kodály he revered as great musicians and humanitarians.

The few lessons he had with them he retained in detail for the rest of his life. I remember when Bartók’s remains were brought back to Hungary for the lying in state at the Academy of Arts and Sciences, Solti and the great pianist Annie Fisher, his friend and colleague from the Liszt Academy, went hand in hand like two young children to place a rose on the coffin of their great master.

Solti valued enormously the chamber music classes of Professor Leo Weiner, where he learnt how to prepare a piece of music, how to listen and how to work with an ensemble. He also learnt modesty, never to be self-satisfied. In the class each student had to prepare a piano piece to be performed in front of Professor Weiner and fellow students. My husband told me this was the most nerve-wracking exercise. Professor Weiner was always very critical and you had to accept his criticism in front of your fellow students. One week, after playing Weiner unusually praised him as being “very good”. My husband told me he danced home and the following week arrived proudly with his prepared piece which, when he was called, sat down to play. He was stopped by the professor who said to him: “Stop, this is terrible, you have no talent. I can’t imagine why you would think you could ever be a musician!”

My husband felt that the consequence of this “hot and cold” way of teaching was that he was always striving for better, never being satisfied, continually working and practising. Whenever we visited the Liszt Academy, the room that had the most meaning for him was the Leo Weiner Room.

Every day throughout his professional life Solti followed the same pattern: he studied his scores and prepared his programmes, an iron routine learnt at the Academy which he never changed. His motto was check, check and double-check – and always be prepared. In later years when he visited Hungary, the Academy was always a destination: in a way it was going home for him. He loved working with the students, talking to them, giving masterclasses, and working with the orchestras in the building which had so many memories for him, particularly the concert hall, which surely must be one of the most beautiful concert halls in the world.

Lady Valerie Solti

Dear Visitors, The Liszt Academy has always been a sacred place for the concert-going public, a place where they could be infused with a love of music, where they could be enriched with memorable concert experiences. From comments we have received and discussions we have had, it was clear just how excited people were about the impending reopening of the building on Liszt Ferenc Square. Now, after a renovation that has lasted several years, the public are met by a resplendent building that offers more services and fully modernized technical facilities. However, it is not only the building itself that has undergone renovation, but the whole way the Liszt Academy organizes its concerts.

In the period before the renewal the Liszt Academy in effect only ever arranged (under its own organization) programmes connected with its teaching; the institution made space available for the majority of concerts and it had no part to play in shaping the programme. This situation has changed, with the Liszt Academy Concert Centre organizing the majority of concerts, although naturally the chambers remain open to artists and orchestras performing here. Professors and students of one of the most distinguished higher educational academies of music teaching in Europe receive – through their own concert organization – plentiful opportunities to perform; and they can showcase those talented young people who, it is to be hoped, will eventually become much sought-after artists on the international concert scene. We consider it equally important that the lustre of the Liszt Academy is further burnished by the presence of the greatest Hungarian and foreign performers and many memorable concerts.

Concert organization these days is inconceivable without state-of-theart technology, which is why we have established our own ticketing system and public relations; and we furnish you with information about our programmes through a variety of publications, a new website and Facebook page. We would like to establish ever closer contacts with you. We look forward to receiving your feedback: please feel free to contact us at any time.

We trust we have satisfied your hopes and expectations, and we look forward to welcoming you back as regular visitors.

AndrĂĄs Csonka Cultural Director, Liszt Academy

Dear Readers, Let us step into the Grand Hall. Now stand for a moment in silence and accustom our eyes to the light: under the vaulted arch an angel with lute descends into our consciousness, while the candles supported by the hermaean pillars of the organ gallery proclaim the victory of light over the darkness of a disordered world. The lights dim. We find ourselves in the laurel grove sanctuary of Apollo. And in the rounded corner of the hall, high up, on both sides of the organ, runs the script “Sursum Corda – Favete lingvis”. As the first notes of the music start to lift the heart, the tongue stutters and then falls silent. What is this, a pagan festival? Do not fear – this is a festival, but of the purest kind; as Pascal wrote: ‘It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason.’

A 106-year-old palace of music, home of an academy with a 138-year-old living history and a world-famous university founded by Liszt, reconstructed to perfection, now launches its own concert organization: the two together are essentially a new unique entity. This is the key location for music in the centre of this tiny country, nestled in a vast European continent: a global brand, to use a modern term. To generate in the ocean of global information a verbal and visual ripple of a magnitude worthy of this new entity is a task to make the knees tremble and give the heart palpitations.

Patina and progress: it is my opinion that the tension between these two can create new openings in the musical world. Born of considered love came, amongst many others, the new logo, the image pointing from the past to the future; the new website; the charm of the evening programme sheets inspired by book graphics; the Puritanism of the monthly programme schedule featuring insider insights; and the Concert Magazine, which is a shared favourite of my excellent team and music historian Gergely Fazekas, the editor, and which can hold its head high amongst other publications in the genre.

As a matter of fact, we have learned from the two genius “architectdreamers” of the building, Giergl and Korb, when we reached out towards the fellow arts: here, photographic and fine art transcend the requirements of simple programme illustration; the publication is a programme mirror reflecting glittering aspects, while at the same time, through its essays, interviews and portraits, it takes us beneath the surface and into the depths. From where our soul rises, borne by music.

Happy reading!

Imre Szabó Stein Editor-in-Chief Director of Communications and Media Content Development, Liszt Academy

János Ferencsik (1983) © Gábor Fejér Fejér Ferencsik (fotó: archív ff)

Tuesday 25 October 2013 / 19.00

Grand Hall Opening Gala (private) Erkel: Hungarian National Anthem Gyula Fekete: Fanfare Hungarian Folk Songs Bartók: Letter to Those at Home Kodály: Evening Song J. S. Bach: Cello Suite in C major (BWV 1009) - Prelude Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 Bartók: 44 Duos for Violin (BB 104 – excerpts) Dohnányi: Piano Quintet in C minor, Op. 1 – Movement 1 (Allegro) Liszt: Christus – No. 7: Pater noster Beethoven: Choral Fantasy, Op. 80 Anna Csizmadia (vocals); Gergely Bogányi, Dénes Várjon, Gábor Farkas (piano); Katalin Kokas, Barnabás Kelemen (violin); Gergely Devich (cello); Keller Quartet; Students of the Brass Department of the Liszt Academy; New Liszt Ferenc Chamber Choir (Péter Erdei – choir master); National Philharmonic Children's Choir (Gabriella Thész – Choir Master); Choir and Symphony Orchestra of the Liszt Academy Gabriella Thész, Domonkos Héja, Péter Erdei (conductor) Rejuvenated both in body and in spirit, the principal building of the Liszt Academy opens on the anniversary of the birth of founder Ferenc Liszt.

This private celebratory concert, which is being broadcast live on the public service television, and to which senior diplomatic figures and the cream of international music life have been invited, offers a cross-section of the history of Hungarian music, from the earliest folk songs, through Erkel and Liszt, representatives of the national Romantic period, to the Art Nouveau masterpieces of a young Dohnányi,

and onward to Kodály and Bartók, the leading figures of new Hungarian music in the 20th century. Furthermore, since the aforementioned composers drew heavily on the European common wellspring, and the Liszt Academy has also represented both a national genius and a European spirit throughout its entire history, it would be impossible to omit from the concert programme Bach and Beethoven, the two most influential cultural heroes in the history of western art music. The list of performers is just as symbolic as the programme, since all are students or professors of the

Liszt Academy, and they represent all generations: from the youngest talents, 15-year-old Gergely Devich, who attends the class for outstandingly talented musicians, and Anna Csizmadia, who is in the folk music faculty and was winner of the “Fölszállott a páva (The Peacock)” talent contest, through the academy’s internationallyacclaimed art teacher couple Katalin Kokas and Barnabás Kelemen, and the youthful assistant professor Gábor Farkas, winner of the Weimar Liszt piano competition in 2009, to such influential performers as András Keller, leader of the Liszt Academy Chamber Music Workshop, and legendary conductor-professor Péter Erdei. Thus, we will be witnesses to a historical moment in music, when generations and periods, cultures and mentalities, past and present, patina and progress reach out to touch each other.

Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre 7

Theme and Variations The past 138 years of the Liszt Academy spool through my mind like a film.

The fact is, this is how many years have passed since its foundation, from the moment that Ferenc Erkel gave the inaugural address of the Liszt Academy in an old house, long since disappeared, on the Pest side of the Danube embankment, in Hal Square, not far from what would be the bridgehead of the yet-to-be-built Elizabeth Bridge.

Just how many attended this first meeting? We know that Ferenc Liszt, whose name was hoisted as a standard for all those who for years had lobbied for the formation of the new academy, was not present. Was he engaged elsewhere? Perhaps he lacked faith in its success? Maybe he doubted that teaching would ever take off? Erkel, sticking to the spirit of 1848, in winding up a lengthy and complex thought process, stated the goal in a sonorous voice, “...our dear treasure, so intensively fused with our national existence, and now considered worthy of the attention of the entire world: the cosmopolitan right of Hungarian music and its capability to develop should be proclaimed from the highest levels of state public education.”

Hungarian music? Seven years later a Bavarian composer, Hans von Koessler, was appointed to one of the chairs at the invitation of Liszt.

Hungarian music! All of the promising members of the great generation of new Hungarian music studied under him: Dohnányi, Bartók, Kodály and Weiner, even Imre Kálmán, Jenő Huszka and Viktor Jacobi.

Hungarian music… In the meantime Koessler, Popper and other teachers with roots abroad were reported because they had still not learned Hungarian. And Liszt? Well, nobody questioned that at the time.

Another image from 1907: the national anthem rings out in the new palace of music on Liszt Ferenc Square, though not on the famous Voit organ in the Grand Hall – it had not yet been completed (wasn’t this part of the project?) – but instead from the throats of several hundred attendees. Bartók and Dohnányi, Hubay, and most probably Popper and Richter, were also singing there. The first few concerts were staged: past and future became almost palpable, and as on so many occasions since, on the occasion of the opening of the academic year in the Grand Hall, professors emeritus and assistant lecturers, artists holding “gold university certificates”, and freshers existing in a Parsifallike state of naivety find themselves next to each other – and time truly becomes space, as in the Grail Hall in Parsifal. It is impossible not to be deeply moved.

The house is filled with ever more unforgettable sounds. 1940: Bartók and his wife bid farewell to the academy, and to their homeland, with a two-piano concert. Georg Solti – who luckily quits hazardous Budapest in 1938 – is homesick while in London or Chicago, and his heart yearns for the Liszt Academy, for the golden age, for the presence of Bartók, Kodály and Weiner. Sándor Végh: “We wait on the turn of the staircase for Bartók or Kodály to come out of the classroom, just so that we can greet them...” What moments, what artists, what people!

8

Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály and the Waldbauer-Kerpely Quartet (1910) © Aladár Székely / MTA BTK ZTI, Bartók Archive

Theme and Variations

Packed concerts in the Grand Hall, almost suffocatingly hot; we are standing upstairs on the second floor: Richter, Oistrakh, Menuhin, Lovro von Matačić, Rostropovich, Kobayashi. We breathe as one: nowhere in the world do audience and artist come as close as they do in the Grand Hall. The chamber itself sings: the wood panels, hollow spaces, sculptures resonate. On the walls, the symbols of music, portrayed with inexhaustible visual imagination. This is our Music Academy! There are fans, generations, “even my grandmother was there”. There are favourite seats. Virtually everyone knows everyone else. Were you here yesterday? What a performance! The apotheosis of European civic culture. Big words. “The world of yesterday” (à la Stefan Zweig). We would like to believe that of tomorrow, too.

The Chamber Hall – merely the Chamber Hall? – is a second-class citizen in the house. This is where the instrumental and singing examinations are held. Sometimes it brings back bad memories. It is not nearly as atmospheric as the Grand Hall, particularly when one observes from the stage the faculty professors sitting in a half-empty hall. (Although the Wigmore Hall would go green with envy, if it had a face – and even more so when it was an opera house!) Yes, the Chamber Hall. The grand renovation has renewed everything.

The colour, too, and the original colour of the Grand Hall: white ornamentation on a dark background. Strangely enough, today we have the patience to fuss over this. During the 1960s they simply painted the whole thing over in a medium brown. But we liked that as well!

Liszt Academy. It’s his, let there be no doubt about it, although it only proclaimed its founder in name from its 50th anniversary in 1925. It took many years before the institution was assimilated to the master, gaining an international reputation of similar stature through its famed teachers and students. Through them the Liszt Academy has travelled many times around the globe. And through them it has become a place of pilgrimage.

Both the building itself and the organization (university and concert centre) were renewed courtesy of the European Union, the wider homeland of Liszt.

Its content, however, remains firmly Hungarian.

It includes the violins and cimbaloms of Gypsies; the songs, dances and plays of peasants of the villages of Transylvania; the piano playing and music of Bartók; the magic of Dohnányi; the power of Kodály’s choruses; the masterpieces and messages of Ligeti, Kurtág, Durkó, Petrovics and Szőllősy. The departments – family trees; the teaching – testaments.

Hungaricum, which remains valid even in a globalized world. Natives and many others who live in distant lands feel it to be their own.

It is difficult to put down in words, because we live in it. After all, the Venetians don’t marvel day in, day out at the palaces lining the Canal Grande. And yet we gaze in awe, celebrating, perhaps precisely because during the period of renovation we could not marvel at it for such a long time. Our thanks for your patience and for keeping the faith. The security of music has returned to our lives.

András Batta

10

Friday 25 October 2013 / 19.30

Sunday 27 October 2013 / 19.30

Tuesday 29 October 2013 / 19.30

Grand Hall

Grand Hall

Grand Hall

Jeney 70 Birthday Gala of Zoltán Jeney Petrassi: Kyrie for Choir and Strings J. S. Bach: Fürchte dich nicht (BWV 228) Zoltán Jeney: Infinitive Zoltán Jeney: Pavane Zoltán Jeney: Above the Death Lake (world premiere) Zoltán Jeney: Funeral Rite – Part 4 Emőke Baráth (soprano), Zoltán Megyesi (tenor) MR Symphony Orchestra, Hungarian Radio Choir (Gábor Oláh – choir master) Zoltán Kocsis, Salamon Kamp (conductor) Zoltán Jeney is truly a pioneer and doyen of avant-garde Hungarian contemporary music. He is associated with the formation of the most original workshop of the 1970s and ‘80s, the New Music Studio, which cherished a dual mission: to acquaint the domestic audience with the latest trends in the music of the West (the radicalism of Cage or the post-serialism of Boulez and Stockhausen), and to experiment with a new type of aesthetic. Besides this, whole generations of artists learnt from Jeney in his time as head of the Department of Composition of the Liszt Academy for 16 years from 1995.

This birthday gala concert includes compositions from his guiding spiritual master, Bach, as well as his most influential teacher, Goffredo Petrassi, in addition to Part 4 of what is generally considered his principal work, performed under the baton of perhaps the most accomplished interpreter of the Jeney oeuvre, Zoltán Kocsis.

Tickets: HUF 3 500, 2 800, 2 000, 1 500 Organizer: Hungarian Radio Music Ensembles, Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Black and White Colours Dezső Ránki, Edit Klukon, Fülöp Ránki J. S. Bach–Barnabás Dukay: Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein (BWV 641) – Chorale Prelude for Three Pianos (world premiere) J. S. Bach–Barnabás Dukay: Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her (BWV 769a) – Canons for Three Pianos (world premiere) Barnabás Dukay: Trees of the Hill – Canonic Motet in Two Parts for Three Pianos Barnabás Dukay: …from Sunshine, Water and Stones… – Tone Poem for Two Pianos Couperin–Barnabás Dukay: Le tic-toc-choc, ou Les maillotins – Adaptation of Barnabás Dukay for Two Pianos Liszt: Christmas Tree Edit Klukon, Dezső Ránki, Fülöp Ránki (piano) Dezső Ránki has been a defining figure on the domestic music scene for more than four decades. The by now traditional four-hand and double piano productions developed together with his wife Edit Klukon nearly 20 years ago are characterized by perfected harmony and fine attunement to each other.

They are joined by the pianist couple’s son, Fülöp Ránki, who has proved his worth as a chamber partner. Composer Barnabás Dukay, who provides the raison d’être and musical backbone to the programme, can similarly be considered as a member of the family, albeit not in the sense of a blood relation, but certainly from a musical point of view. The meditative music of Dukay, particularly when performed by the Ránkis, is capable of bringing the listener to a trance-like state, and this transcendent experience links Dukay’s works with pieces

by Bach, Couperin and Liszt.

Tickets: HUF 5 400, 4 300, 2 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Tamás Vásáry 80 Surprise Concert Kossuth Prize-winner Tamás Vásáry celebrates his 80th birthday this year.

He was a student of Lajos Hernádi at the Liszt Academy, 1956 rocketed him into the international arena, when in just a few years he became one of the most successful pianists. He began conducting in 1971, and from this time on he has been returning to the land of his birth ever more frequently. From 1993, he was senior director of music of the MR Symphony Orchestra for nearly a decade, and he was elected honorary senior director of music for life in 2004.

To mark his 80th birthday, his friends, colleagues and students, and of course his alma mater, present him with this surprise concert as a tribute.

Tamás Vásáry (1988) © István Cser / MTI

Tickets: HUF 7 900, 6 500, 4 800 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre 11

“It is the Sacred Hall of Music to Me” At a farewell concert series in 2009, before the Liszt Academy was closed for restoration, he conducted all of Beethoven’s symphonies in the Grand Hall in one single day. On October 24, 2013, he will once again step onto the conductor’s podium in the renovated Grand Hall for a gala concert on the occasion of the 70th birthday of his old friend, Zoltán Jeney. Of course, Zoltán Kocsis is bound to the historic building on Liszt Ferenc Square – his alma mater – in many other ways.

Can you remember the first time you visited Liszt Academy?

I was about seven. I was taking piano lessons in Dohány Street at that time, but when I came under the tutelage of Erzsébet Szőnyi, I began coming to the Academy to attend her classes. I loved that building.

I remember on the first few occasions I was simply in awe of it. I was fascinated by the art nouveau decorations and the marvellous windows.

When I was a boy, my father used to take me to concerts there.

How did your entrance exam to the Academy go?

I will never forget that day. I had a sudden a memory blank, and I fluffed Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in F minor. I had selected some very difficult pieces for the exam, and I can still remember the overwhelming frustration I felt standing on the stage of the Chamber Hall in front of the admission committee. All the teachers were sitting there, but since they all looked very friendly, the uncomfortable feeling slowly receded. The head of the admission board was Professor Pál Kadosa, who liked to talk to the applicants, and always smiled when he asked for a piece that the committee wanted to hear, or when he interrupted the performance with a “That’s it, thank you!” There were some really strong groups at the Academy then: in the year above me were Sándor Falvai and István Lantos, and in the year below me Dezső Ránki and András Schiff.

Could you briefly describe to us Professor Kadosa’s teaching method?

Zoltán Kocsis © gábor Fejér 12

At that time Professor Kadosa no longer showed us anything directly on the piano, nor did he talk too much; but when he spoke, it was always to the point. The real teaching, or the “dirty work” if you like, was done by the assistant professors, György Kurtág and Ferenc Rados. Their method was not mechanical, either, but they concentrated much more on piano playing. When appraising us, Kadosa liked to stress the most important things only. I remember I was learning the second movement of his Piano Sonata No.1, when he said of a phrase: “My dear Zoli, please play this part with a little less importance.” One of his favourite expressions was: “vigorously, but not that vigorously.” He was a funny old man too: “Good job, Zoli, though it’s a pity you played it way too harshly.” We all liked him a lot, and despite his authority, we were never afraid of him. I dare say that his secret strength was never to prevaricate. And his music was just like him: clear and simple, filtered and bared to the utmost, devoid of long, superfluous developments, modulating transitions and retransitions. Kadosa was – as a man and a phenomenon, in his attitude to other men and to music – like a crystallized coral which contains all essence.

Zoltán Kocsis © Judit Marjai

In what terms would you characterize that pianist tradition which was founded by Liszt himself, and which can be mastered today in the Academy’s Piano Department?

In the pianist’s relation to the keys; in his/her healthy posture and gesticulation; and in the stylistic liberty that Liszt realized as a composer, which made his style “completely disintegrated”, as Béla Bartók put it, and yet still unequivocally recognizable. About his piano playing I would say – and it is emphatically my own personal opinion – that it must have been like mixing my own performance of Liszt’s “Norma” Paraphrase with Ránki’s rendering of the “Don Giovanni” Paraphrase and Jandó’s interpretation of Danse Macabre.

According to several contemporary accounts, Liszt’s piano playing was far from perfect…

ZOLTÁN JENEY © andrea Felvégi

Zoltán Kocsis on 70-year-old Zoltán Jeney I must have been about eighteen when I first met Zoltán Jeney in Péter Eötvös’s Donáti Street apartment. He immediately made a strong impression on me, and my opinion has not changed one bit ever since. I have always thought of him as a master in every sense of the word: he knows all there is to know about this profession; I would say he is the uncrowned king of contemporary composers.

We have agreed on professional matters from the beginning: we considered the same composers of importance, and we were always thinking along the same aesthetic principles. When we talked about music, it was a real dialogue and a genuine exchange of ideas: we shared similar views, and exchanged them in similar tones. I think that Jeney, like all outstanding artists “makes himself classic”: in Dénes Bartha’s words, he ennobles and idealizes his unique style so that it ultimately becomes the standard. For instance, Funeral Rite is a grand synthesizing composition, a fountain of Jeney’s multi-layered experience and of centuries-old universal music history.

There is nothing outrageous about this either, as most remarkable artists feel the need to do this kind of summarizing work at the zenith of their careers.

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Who cares? When people came out of his concerts in Russia, they vowed to observe the day they heard Liszt play as a holy day. That he struck a few false sounds may be true. But what does it matter when one could listen to an authentic performance of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata?

I dare say that a few offbeats can form an integral part of a really well-performed Beethoven piece.

Most artists who have ever performed at the Liszt Academy rave about the Grand Hall. What do you think the secret of this concert hall is?

I am not sure. I only know that I like it much better than any other concert hall in the world. I find it unbelievably inspiring to play there: it is a richly decorated space, but the ornamentation is not overwhelming, and you can actually feel the centuries-old traditions emanating from the walls, which lends a warm and friendly atmosphere to the place. To me it is the sacred hall of music, the Concert Hall. I cannot wait for the building to reopen, and when it does, I will sit up on the cloakroom counter first thing, as we did when we were students. We used to perch there like sparrows. There is something about that building which makes you feel more knowledgeable as soon as you cross its threshold.

Gergely Fazekas

Thursday 31 October 2013 / 19.00

Friday 1 November 2013 / 19.30

Saturday 2 November 2013 / 15.30

Grand Hall

Grand Hall

Grand Hall

MÁV Symphony Orchestra Verdi: Requiem Eszter Sümegi (soprano); Bernadett Wiedemann (mezzo-soprano); Attila Fekete (tenor); István Rácz (bass) Kodály Choir Debrecen (Zoltán Pad – choir master) Péter Csaba (conductor)

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Zugló Philharmonic Concerto Budapest J. S. Bach: Gottes Zeit (BWV 106) R. Strauss: Death and Transfiguration, Op. 24 Mozart: Requiem (K. 626)

Mozart: Adagio and Fugue in C minor (K. 546) Mozart: Piano Concerto in A major (K. 414) Mozart: Requiem (K. 626) Mária Kovalszki (piano), Veronika Geszthy (soprano), Atala Schöck (alto), István Horváth (tenor), Gábor Bretz (bass) Zugló Philharmonic – Szent István Király Symphony Orchestra & Oratorio Choir Kálmán Záborszky (conductor)

The combined work of two extraordinarily committed conductors provides us with a unique interpretation of Verdi’s Requiem on All Hallows’ Eve, known familiarly as Halloween. Born in Cluj-Napoca (Kolozsvár), Péter Csaba has been chief conductor of the distinguished MÁV Symphony Orchestra for more than a year. At the same time he is also a well-known figure in the musical life of Sweden and France. An outstanding violinist, today he is more often seen wielding the conductor’s baton, where he is recognized as a passionate and exhilaratingly inspirational artist.

Zoltán Pad graduated and was later awarded a doctoral degree from the Liszt Academy. Despite his relative youth, his commanding presence has already characterised his career. Some of his most notable triumphs have come in the four years he has spent working with the Kodály Choir Debrecen.

The mission these two conductors have been charged with is by no means simple: bring to life Verdi’s Requiem, and present – in all its variation and colour – the sometimes intense, sometimes sublime drama of this piece written specifically for the concert hall.

Andrea Rost (soprano), Melinda Heiter (mezzo-soprano), Zoltán Megyesi (tenor), Gábor Bretz (bass) New Liszt Ferenc Chamber Choir (Péter Erdei – choir master) András Keller (conductor) All Saints’ Day: not the festival of mourning but rather one of remembrance and devotion. András Keller has compiled a programme for a concert by the Liszt Academy’s resident orchestra, Concerto Budapest, that considers three attitudes towards death. The concepts of death from the Old and New Testaments clash in a unique Baroque vision in the cantata Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, the non plus ultra of requiem music by the 22-yearold Bach. Requiem, one of the most mysterious pieces of not only Mozart’s oeuvre but music literature as a whole, is a dialogue on the impenetrable nature of death spoken in the refined language of Viennese classicism.

In contrast, the romantic vision of Richard Strauss talks in the overflowing prose of symphonic programme music about what awaits us at the moment of death, and what follows.

In their nearly 60 years of existence, the Zugló Philharmonic – a national treasure of Hungary – have toured all of Europe and worked together with star artists such as János Ferencsik, Kobayashi Ken-Ichiro and Yuri Simonov.

Perhaps the greatest attraction of the near 100-member Szent István Király Symphony Orchestra (which is joined by the Oratorio Choir, comprising slightly more than this number) is the youthful clarity of their performance style, a characteristic deriving in part from the average age of the musicians and in part from the fruit of the labour of conductor Kálmán Záborszky. The proud holders of the National Youth Orchestra title always approach the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with particular care and sensitivity.

The programme features the Adagio and Fugue in C minor (K. 546), one of the most abstract pieces in the Mozart oeuvre, the Piano Concerto in A major (K. 414), which is laden with irresistible melodies, and the iconic Requiem.

Tickets: HUF 4 000, 3 500, 3 000 Organizer: MÁV Symphony Orchestra

Tickets: HUF 6 400, 4 700, 3 200 Organizer: Concerto Budapest

Tickets: HUF 2 100, 1 800, 1 500 Organizer: Zugló Philharmonic

Robert Mapplethorpe: Calla Lily (1986) Š Copyright The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.

Courtesy Art + Commerce

Sunday 3 November 2013 / 11.00

Sunday 3 November 2013 / 19.30

Grand Hall

Grand Hall

Jubilee Symphony Orchestra of Szent István Király High School Beethoven: Fidelio – Overture Mozart: Piano Concerto in D minor (K. 466) Kodály: On the Tomb of Martyrs Kodály: Te Deum of Buda Castle Mónika Szabadfi (piano) St. Anthony Choir, Pasarét (artistic director: András Déri) Gergely Ménesi (conductor) When in 1994 the “István Orchestra”, founded by the legendary József Záborszky, celebrated the 40 th anniversary of its formation, it was decided to establish the Jubilee Symphony Orchestra of Szent István Király High School, which was to be made up of old members of the ensemble.

The orchestra harks back to the golden age of civic musical culture inasmuch as every single member of the ensemble has a “day job” and their music making is a leisure-time pursuit. Their concerts are always hallmarked by exceptional enthusiasm, thanks not only to their “István” heritage but also to Gergely Ménesi, conductor of the Jubilee Symphony Orchestra, who has been an active participant in Hungarian music circles for years. The first part of the evening is dedicated to an epoch-making piece by Beethoven, the overture to Fidelio, as well as Mozart’s intensely dramatic Piano Concerto in D minor, which in fact had a great influence on Beethoven, followed after the break by two Kodály works.

Tickets: HUF 3 500, 2 900, 2 500, 2 000 Organizer: Partitúra Foundation 18

Chamber Music – Tuned for Grand Hall Kelemen Quartet Mozart: String Quartet in C major (K. 465, “Dissonances”) Bartók: String Quartet No. 4 (BB 95) György Kurtág: Six moments musicaux, Op. 44 Schumann: String Quartet in A minor, Op. 41/1 Kelemen Quartet: Barnabás Kelemen, Gábor Homoki (violin); Katalin Kokas (viola); Dóra Kokas (cello) The Hungarian string quartet tradition is rich indeed, with ensembles of the most remarkable quality, from the legendary Waldbauer-Kerpely Quartet, through the Sándor Végh-inspired New Hungarian String Quartet and the renowned Bartók and Kodály String Quartets, to the András Keller ensemble, leader of the Liszt Academy Chamber Music Workshop. The Kelemen Quartet,

founded barely four years ago, ably continue this great tradition. Their progress has been marked by a long list of festival awards and invitations to play at prestigious venues: they have performed in London and Berlin, not to mention Melbourne and Beijing. This evening’s programme is a fine example of their stunning versatility, running as it does from the classics (represented

by Mozart’s String Quartet in C major, a work that far outstripped the conventions of his age), through the pure Romanticism of Schumann, into the early 20th century of Bartók’s astoundingly complex String Quartet No. 4, and right up to the music of today, with Kurtág’s Six moments musicaux.

Tickets: HUF 4 900, 3 500, 2 100 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Kelemen Quartet © Tamás Dobos

Rational People Chamber music is generally held to be the highest ranking genre of classical music, which with the assistance of the most refined and complex musical devices, opens the door to the transcendent sphere.

The string quartets of Beethoven and Bartók, the quintets of Brahms, and the trios of Mozart all define this tradition, not to mention Goethe’s highly influential definition of a quartet, according to which the string quartet – and we might add all “true” chamber music – is in fact nothing less than “four rational people conversing”.

The Liszt Academy, established as a sanctuary to the aristocracy of the spirit, paid particular attention to the genre of chamber music right from its earliest days. Though founder Ferenc Liszt is traditionally celebrated as the most significant soloist in the history of music, he was also a legendary chamber musician; indeed, in one sense the famed Hungarian string quartet tradition can also be traced back to him. In fact, on several occasions Liszt played chamber music with renowned Hungarian violinist József Joachim, who frequently played quartets in Liszt’s musical gatherings in Weimar. Joachim taught Jenő Hubay, who at the express request of Minister of Culture Ágoston Trefort quit the Brussels Conservatory in 1886 for a teaching post at the Liszt Academy.

Hubay played a central role in introducing quartet playing to Hungary.

Naturally, this required partners, notably the Czech David Popper, who started teaching at the Liszt Academy in the same year as Hubay and was the school’s first professor of cello. So it is with only slight exaggeration that one can say that the Hubay-Popper string quartet, with its roots back to Liszt – incidentally, Popper’s wife was Sophie Menter, student of Liszt – provided a fertile ground from which sprang the Hungarian string quartet school and in which flourished the spirit of the academy towards chamber music.

Undoubtedly the most important figure in the history of the Liszt Academy in the field of chamber music was Leó Weiner, who taught chamber music from 1923, and whose workshop, which operated virtually as an independent institution within the Music Academy, turned out students such as Georg Solti, Antal Doráti, Tibor Varga, Dénes Kovács, Albert Simon, János Starker and György Kurtág, as well as many others from a seemingly endless list.

That the chamber music workshop is once again functioning in the Liszt Academy, under the leadership of András Keller, and that a significant slice of the concerts being staged in the renovated Grand Hall are chamber recitals, is sufficient cause for celebration in the secure knowledge that even in the 21st century there are still rational people willing to converse with each other.

Gergely Fazekas

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Detail of the reliefs on the main facade (1940s) © Budapest City Archives

Márta Kurtág & György Kurtág (1988) © István Cser / MTI

Sándor Végh & András Schiff (1986) © Andrea Felvégi 21

Tuesday 5 November 2013 / 19.30

Wednesday 6 November 2013 / 19.30

Grand Hall

Grand Hall

On The Spot – Folk Music Department

Brad Mehldau The First Budapest Solo Concert

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Wedding Music from the Zobor Region Bagpipe Tunes Soldier’s Songs from Mezőség Shepherd’s Songs from Alföld Folk Tunes from Szék in Memoriam Béla Halmos South-Slavic Tambura Tunes Palóc Flute Tunes Flute Music from Transylvania Tendl Pál’s Sopron Dulcimer Tunes Instrumental Music from Kalotaszeg Dance Music from Szatmár Region

In his music Brad Mehldau not only accommodates but actually organically integrates the classical musical traditions of more than 300 years with pop, rock and jazz. What at first sight appears to be an impossibility immediately becomes understandable on first hearing. Mehldau blends, with a light touch and fine sense of style, all the musical influences that have inspired him in his life. He regularly plays in trios; he has performed together with Pat Metheny, John Scofield and Wayne Shorter; he has tried his hand at electronic music; he particularly enjoys interpretive work and adaptations of songs by Radiohead, Massive Attack, Soundgarden, Pink Floyd and even Nirvana; and he has also recorded a joint album with Swedish mezzosoprano Anne Sofie von Otter. Though Budapest audiences have had several opportunities to enjoy his art, this is the first time that Brad Mehldau is going solo in Hungary, in the Grand Hall of the Liszt Academy.

Ilona Budai, Ildikó Cserna, Éva Fábián, Mária Maczkó, Mariann Nyitrai, Réka Palócz, Márta Sebestyén, Katalin Szvorák, Anna Vakler, Gergely Agócs, Péter Anka, Krisztián Dömény, István Hegedűs, Vince Mészáros, Krisztián Kovács, Gergő Pojendán, Zoltán Zsikó & Students of the Folk Music Department (vocals), Csaba Ökrös, István Pál Szalonna, Tamás Gombai, Tamás Nyitrai, Balázs Vizeli (violin); Péter Árendás, Márton Fekete (viola); Attila Csávás (clarinet); Zoltán Juhász, Emese Nyéky (recorder); Anna Németh (bagpipes); Kálmán Balogh (dulcimer); Róbert Doór (double bass); Attila Mihó (gardon); Vujicsics Ensemble; Söndörgő Ensemble Host: Ferenc Sebő

Tickets: HUF 7 900, 6 500, 4 800 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Tickets: HUF 3 900, 2 800, 1 700 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Though the extraordinarily popular Folk Music Department of the Liszt Academy may be relatively new, it continues a tradition that is well over a century old. Studied initially

by Bartók and Kodály, Hungarian folk song culture is still very much in the limelight today thanks to the recent renaissance and huge success of the dance house movement.

The elemental power of the genre fertilizes contemporary Hungarian culture in a thousand different ways; it continues to flourish in its own right and, at the same time, profoundly influences other genre of music. The constantly recurring – some might say pedantic – question raised in academic music circles as to whether it is possible to perform folk music authentically on a stage, uprooted from its home earth, by artists mostly socialized within an urban environment can now be emphatically answered in the affirmative.

15 ĂŠve olvasom.

Absolute Freedom He is one of the most exciting jazz pianists of our times, an artist who refuses to acknowledge genre boundaries. As far as he is concerned, every audible phenomenon, from pop hits to the classics, is the perfect raw ingredient from which to create music, and what’s more, both viscerally fascinating and intellectually complex music. In advance of his first solo recital in Budapest (on 5 November), the American Brad Mehldau spoke to the Liszt Academy’s Concert Magazine about the hazards of playing solo, how improvisation works and the angelic nature of Beethoven, Bach, Coltrane and Hendrix.

How important is classical music for you as a jazz musician?

I employ very many classical elements, but the same goes for pop and rock, or I could say even Brazilian dance music and many, many other motifs.

On the one hand, the several hundred years of the classical canon can hardly be ignored, and on the other hand it represents an inexhaustible store of possibilities. However, I consider myself first and foremost an improvisational jazz musician who tries to draw creatively on music literature and to use everything possible. Thus my choices of music are not coincidental, but in my case this is not what you might call classical piano playing.

What is the difference between solo playing and improvising together with others?

One thing’s for sure and that is that playing solo represents the greatest challenge because I am playing without a safety net. I don’t have anyone else to grab me if I slip. Solo is absolute freedom. Whether acknowledged or not, it is a fact that when improvising together jazz musicians vary the themes along the lines of patterns that form part of the collective store of knowledge, even when they are throwing musical refrains back and forth, or when they duel. If I play by myself, then there is no such dramaturgical guidance: I can only count on myself. Of course, it is also true that I don’t have to pay attention to anyone else’s playing. But then again, when I do this it is essential that I arrange the composition around some sort of story.

Things become really exciting when the audience also gets this story.

So, how do you go about preparing for your solo recitals?

Like any true jazz musician, I plan out and invent the foundations of my improvisation. I bring several ideas and stories to the stage. In practice, this means specific musical themes that can be enhanced by phrases.

Then it frequently happens that I pick out only a single stem from this carefully composed bouquet, and this is what I hand to the audience, especially if the performance comes together. I decide in advance roughly the length of each theme, but if I’m in the swing of it and I linger a bit on a particular motif, if I let the music influence and carry me, then there is often no time for the other themes. During the preparatory stage I also try to decide on the form beforehand. For instance, whether to stay within the framework of a sonata form retaining the classical expositiondevelopment-reprise trinity or to play more freely.

The broader public took notice of your art from your pop and rock arrangements. On what basis do you choose to arrange a Beatles, Radiohead or Nirvana number?

Good, strong songs – these are the ones I like to play. It is as simple as that.

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By your own admission John Coltrane and Jimi Hendrix diverted you from classical music. How did this happen?

In the early 1980s my parents sent me to a music camp for three summers in a row. It was located less than a mile away from Tanglewood, the famous outdoor venue where the Boston Symphony Orchestra resides every summer. We regularly went on trips to Tanglewood. I was so lucky. I saw people like Leonard Bernstein and Georg Solti, and heard pianists like Rudolf Serkin. Our camp was for playing chamber music; everyone went to classical music school, as I did. During my third summer, one of my roommates, a guy named Louis from New York, pulled out a cassette featuring The John Coltrane Quartet. Despite the heatwave we locked ourselves in the room, which was like a sauna, and listened to the 20-minute recording for hours. The music of Coltrane really freaked me out. Back home in suburbia my friends were listening to The Police and Van Halen; these New York City kids were listening to Coltrane. In the same summer, my other roommate, who was a piano player like me, was listening non-stop to Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsies recording from the Filmore East album.

Machine Gun took me somewhere else and just dumped me there. The music of Coltrane and Hendrix registered as pleasure for me, of course, but they were a new kind of pleasure. It was destabilizing but filled me with an unknown joy; I felt that they held a power that was beyond my comprehension. They represented such greatness that my first reaction was of fear. Only later did I come to realise that this experience is what the writers of the Bible meant when they wrote about the “fear” of God. Reading your interviews it is noticeable that you make frequent reference to the spiritual aspects of music. Can you explain what you are thinking of here?

Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Coltrane’s Love Supreme, Hendrix’s Machine Gun are “spiritual” experiences, but not in the moralizing, strictly religious sense. Only the greatest were capable of reaching such heights. Beethoven – the first true rock star in music, who showed the way for Liszt and Keith Richards – came closest to his creator with the Missa Solemnis, written late in his life. It is a mass that retains the established forms in appearance only; in its content, however, it overwhelms all other masses before it.

In the system of iconography of European Christian culture it falls to the angels to participate in the divine. In this sense Bach, Beethoven, Coltrane and Hendrix were all angels.

Brad mehldau © michael wilson

Tamás Vajna

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Conducting masterclass with Leonard Bernstein (1983) © éva horváth / mti

Jazz-band in room X. of Liszt Academy (1930) © metropolitan ervin szabó library, budapest collection

Dizzy Gillespie at the Liszt Academy (1989) © András bánkuti 26

© Budapest City Archives

János Ferencsik (1983) © Gábor Fejér

Yehudi Menuhin’s solo recital (1958) © Edit Molnár / MTI 27

Thursday 7 November 2013 / 19.45 Friday 8 November 2013 / 19.45 Saturday 9 November 2013 / 15.30 Sunday 10 November 2013 / 19.45

Grand Hall

Mikhail Pletnev & Budapest Festival Orchestra Liszt: Mazeppa Mozart: Piano concerto No. 8 in C Major (K. 246) Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 5 in D major, Op. 107 (‘Reformation’) Mikhail Pletnev (piano) Budapest Festival Orchestra Gábor Takács-Nagy (conductor) Hungarian audiences are familiar with Mikhail Pletnev: he has appeared several times in Budapest as conductor of the Russian National Orchestra, an ensemble he established in 1990. However, so far he has only ever been in Hungary once as a pianist, for a Chopin recital at the Liszt Academy in 2006, the same year in which he retired as a pianist. After legendary concert tours and recordings by the artist who triumphed at the Tchaikovsky competition in 1979, he decided that he would continue his career ‘merely’ as a conductor (and composer), although at the end of last

year he returned to his first love, the piano. So, after a seven-year break the charismatic Russian returns to the Liszt Academy in order to play (in the Grand Hall, the ‘Mecca of pianists’) one of the most charming piano concertos

by Mozart in the company of Gábor Takács-Nagy and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. The first guest conductor of the Festival Orchestra won world fame as a violinist and representative of the Hungarian chamber music tradition, although these days he makes the most of his exceptional musical virtues as a conductor. The highly promising partnership between Pletnev and Takács-Nagy focuses on the magical work written by a 20-year-old Mozart for Countess Lützow. During these four recitals this work is joined by Mazeppa, Liszt’s symphonic poem structured on the narrative of Victor Hugo, and the masterpiece of 21-year-old Mendelssohn, the Reformation Symphony.

Tickets: HUF 10 000, 6 000, 4 200, 3 400 Organizer: Budapest Festival Orchestra

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Mikhail pletnev © Phil Sayer / Gramophone

Return of the genius He steps onto the stage like a pallbearer at a funeral, but plays the piano with the enthusiasm of a child fiddling with his favourite toy. While conducting, his movements are sometimes of the slightest kind yet he has the capacity to bring both the orchestra and audience into a state of ecstasy.

He is both secretive and informal at the same time, clinically intellectual and grandly melodramatic, a charming clown and intolerable philosopher, chain-smoking devil and vodka-swilling god. He is the essence of a Dostoyevski hero: Prince Myshkin, Stavrogin and Raskolnikov all rolled into one. In a nutshell, Mikhail Pletnev is a paradox.

He graduated from the Moscow Conservatory as the student of Lev Vlasenko. At the age of 21 he snatched the Gold Medal of the International Tchaikovsky Competition in the piano category. In 1979 he debuted – to considerable acclaim – in the United States, but then history intervened.

In the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan he was permitted to play only in Eastern bloc countries for many years. During the 1980s he signed a recording contract with Virgin and gradually his name came to be mentioned alongside the greatest performers. 1988 was a turning point: he played at the Washington conference of the superpowers, nurtured a friendship with Gorbachev, and this opened the way to permission to form the Russian National Orchestra in 1990, the first non-state-sponsored Russian symphonic orchestra since 1917.

In the meantime he remained fully active as a pianist; he has been a recording artist with Deutsche Grammophon since 1996 and his releases have swept the board. In partnership with Martha Argerich they recorded his own transcription for two pianos of Prokofiev’s Cinderella suite (the record went on to win a Grammy prize in 2005). He is reckoned to be one of the most important interpreters of Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin and Tchaikovsky, although when on one occasion he was termed a Russian specialist, he responded by saying, “Russian music is enormously varied. For instance, Scriabin wrote Russian music. Tchaikovsky too. But Scriabin hated Tchaikovsky. Then again, we have Mussorgsky, whose music is similarly Russian. But Tchaikovsky couldn’t bear Mussorgsky.” So he does not believe in national styles and schools of composers. Instead, he believes in personalities. That from the amalgamation of composer and performer personality it is possible to create an explosive compound.

In late 2006 he renounced the piano, and for many years – aside from a few restricted concert performances – he only appeared in public as a conductor. However, last December he made a comeback as pianist, and his genius continues to divide public opinion. In the course of the past few years he has appeared at the Palace of Arts conducting his orchestra on three occasions, whereas his first and last performance playing the piano in Hungary was in the Grand Hall of the Liszt Academy, seven years ago.

At that time he played Chopin: the audience raved, the critics panned him. Pletnev remained indifferent to both sides.

Gergely Fazekas 29

Annie Fischer & Zoltán Kocsis (1985) © Gábor Fejér

The Driving Force of Unattainable Perfection If we seek out consistent themes in the 138 years of teaching practice of the Liszt Academy, then it is worth examining what András Kemenes, current professor of piano major, said about his master, Pál Kadosa: “He helped develop in me the driving force deriving from the unattainability of “good” and “perfection”.” One can argue that one of the important, unwavering messages in the classrooms of the Liszt Academy is the unattainable ideal of the perfect performance, and beside this perhaps something else: you are in the presence of great spirits. As world-famous conductor Ferenc Fricsay put it about his college experiences: “Kodály gave wonderful classes on the science of composition. We were happy to attend the classes of Leó Weiner on chamber music. When we had the chance, we sneaked into the piano classes of Bartók as well. I don’t know of another academy that could offer teaching to such a high standard in this century.”

One can hardly argue with Fricsay. There is little need to introduce the Hungarian composer and pianist traditions of the 20th century, and world-famous Hungarian singers are equally well known, not to mention the dozens of virtuoso violinists who are from the school of Hubay, or the long line of world class Hungarian conductors of the 20th century.

The idea was raised to make the roll of students of the Liszt Academy accessible to the public in some form or another. Thus the family trees of the departments of the Liszt Academy were drawn up in parallel with the renovation work, and these can be seen in the Ligeti building and, once the building on Liszt Square is opened, on the Internet, too. Aside from the family trees an online alumni club is also to be set up, which will provide the opportunity for former students to keep in touch and re-establish contacts with each other, make it easy for the alma mater to contact its one-time students, and allow everyone to find their place in the big family that, for the sake of simplicity, we call the Liszt Academy.

At the same time the stars receive exactly the same place in this family as ‘ordinary’ musicians and teachers since the Liszt Academy would not exist without them; people whose names may not be so well known because they have dealt primarily with teaching and yet they have raised generations of dedicated musicians and music teachers over the years. Their enthusiasm sustains the system of Hungarian music education. As the one-time teacher at the Liszt Academy Klára Kéri (Mrs Miklós Máthé or “Aunty Klári”), who spent 65 years of her life in the teaching profession, put it: “The pianist gives his art to very many people for a short time, while a good teacher gives his art to a few people over a very long time.”

Gergely Fazekas

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Saturday 9 November 2013 / 19.30

Sunday 10 November 2013 / 11.00

Grand Hall

Grand Hall

On the Spot – 115th Anniversary Gala of the Trombone Department A. Fox: Fanfare for Trombones Gabrieli: Sonata Pian’e Forte Mozart: The Magic Flute (K. 620) – Overture István Márta: Trombone Quartet Sándor Balogh: Variations on F. David’s Concertino for Trombone Hidas: Seven Bagatelles for 12 Trombones (excerpts) Defay: Two Dances János Másik: Southern Witch Hidas: Signal

J. S. Bach: Mass in B Minor (BWV 232 – excerpts)

Jiggs Whigham, Jacques Mauger, Irvin Wagner (trombone) Hungarian Trombone Quartet, former and current trombone students of the Liszt Academy’s Jazz Department and Trombone Department Irvin Wagner & Sándor Balogh (conductors) Presenter: Szilvia Becze This concert celebrating the 115th anniversary of the foundation of the Trombone Department has particular significance. The fact is that the launch, in the academic year 1897-98, of trombone instruction at the Liszt Academy was a materialization of the intentions of the then director, Ödön Mihalovich, to modernize

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Sacrum Profanum Dohnányi Orchestra Budafok

Dohnányi Orchestra Budafok; Forty Voices Gábor Hollerung (lecturer & conductor)

the institution: the Music Academy, as one of the world’s leading music academies, would appear before the general public teaching an increasing number of instruments. The gala concert provides a platform for the performance of a cross section of trombone music, with instrumentalists including the very best Hungarian exponents of the art teaming up with international stars: jazz legend Jiggs Whigham, Jacques Mauger, who went from first trombonist at the Paris Opera to a global solo career, and Irvin Wagner, the highly influential professor of trombone at the University of Oklahoma.

Can music be understood?

The question is certainly an old one – and remains all the more difficult to answer for its antiquity. One thing for sure is that no solution can be found without a listening public that is both interested and open to embrace the new.

Thus the extraordinary success of the family-friendly series Understandable Music by the Dohnányi Orchestra Budafok is very encouraging indeed.

Conductor Gábor Hollerung is a born storyteller; his commentaries provide true insight and yet always remain comprehensible and enjoyable for young and old alike. This concert by the Dohnányi Orchestra Budafok examines the key movements of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B minor.

Tickets: HUF 3200, 2100, 1300 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Jegyárak: 2 500, 1 800, 1 200 Ft Rendező: Budafoki Dohnányi Zenekar

Parity There can be no better way of revealing the symbiosis of teaching and concert performance than the concert series ”On the Spot”, which introduces the departments of the Liszt Academy. Ahead of the upcoming concerts presenting the Jazz Department and the Trombone Department, pianist Károly Binder, head of the Jazz Department, and trombonist Gusztáv Hőna, head of the Woodwinds and Brass Department, spoke to the Liszt Academy’s Concert Magazine about the importance of scripted music and improvisation, the unavoidability of contemporary music, and the features of Hungarian jazz.

You, together with your students, are entering the On the Spot concert series. Do these young people understand the significance of being able to perform in one of the world’s bastions of music, in the Grand Hall, respected as a sacred place by the greatest musicians of the past century?

GUSZTÁV HŐNA: The Grand Hall is one of the wonders of the world.

I have every right to say this because I have lived there for virtually my entire life. We have held department concerts there before this, but the space, now that it has regained its original magnificence, is something else altogether, and I suspect that the students will be a bundle of nerves when they are finally set on stage.

KÁROLY BINDER: The opening of the renovated Liszt Academy has finally given several opportunities to jazz, so far treated as something of an orphan, and this inspiration has also had its impact on our work even before the opening. Aside from introducing the departments, the Grand Hall is primarily hosting concerts by world stars such as Ferenc Snétberger and Brad Mehldau. However, we will be giving samples of the genre every month in the Chamber Hall from 2014. Jazz in the Liszt Academy will be represented not by the world of jam sessions but rather by artists who cultivate its more artistic side.

Your art is hallmarked by experimentation. Is brass teaching (now in its 115th year) and jazz teaching (in its 38th year) characterized by a progressive trend?

GH: I am convinced that every musician must play the music of his/her age, in other words, a lot of contemporary music as well. At the beginning of my career, there was only a minimal amount of solo material written for trombone. There are no pieces specifically written for trombone in the Baroque, Classical or later Romantic periods of music. Mozart, too, only played cards with the horn players. When he lost, he wrote horn concertos for them. It appears that the other brass instrumentalists couldn’t play cards. So, independently, we were only able to work with arrangements for a long time. But I decided that the trombone should not just be a solo instrument in jazz. Luckily, from 1972 I came into contact with very many composers in the course of my work with the Radio Orchestra, among them several young ones, and I pestered them about writing works for the trombone. This badgering was pretty successful, and over the years I have built up a very nice repertoire.

Károly Binder & Gusztáv Hőna © Zsolt Pataky

KB: Jean Cocteau said that jazz is contemporary folk music. That is its essence. Naturally, it has its tradition as well, and obviously a huge repertoire of standards. Tens of thousands of music history essays have debated its Afro-American roots and development. The thing is that jazz is not just American. And why exactly would we play American jazz in Budapest?

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On the Spot – Introducing the Departments of the Liszt Academy The audience can become acquainted with the professors and students of the Liszt Academy within the framework of the On the Spot series at the Liszt Academy Concert Centre. The first introduction (on 6 November) comes from the Folk Music Department, the most youthful university workshop, founded just six years ago.

Three days later, the series continues with a concert by the Trombone Department, the timing of which coincides with the launch of trombone teaching at the Liszt Academy exactly 115 years before. The otherworldly sound of a dozen trombones playing at one time in the acoustically superb Grand Hall is something that everyone should experience – if possible in this lifetime! The Jazz Department is giving two concerts in 2013: ensembles of former and current students take to the stage on 20 November, while the Senior Big Band under the baton of Attila László perform on 21 December.

When in the 1970s we turned to the roots of Hungarian folk music, the moniker “free” was hung on us, when in fact we were just thinking differently. It is now apparent that we were looking in the right direction, since today it is certainly not sacrilegious to say – rather it is an increasingly accepted fact in musicology – that jazz is an Afro-European genre. America was just the place where African music met with European music, and freed slaves created spirituals and gospel in churches on the basis of European theory of harmony.

Is improvisation the only significant difference between teaching jazz and classical music?

KB: In jazz, a high degree of instrumental know-how is blended with a preparedness to improvise. However, in essence it does not differ from the classical performing style. As Gershwin said, it is all a matter of rhythm: an F sharp minor scale can be played uniformly or “off-beat” with two-four stresses. The former is the classical sound, the latter jazz. Naturally, today’s modern jazz makes sure to break this rhythm, with uneven rhythms and compositional elements also recognized in classical music. But let’s not forget, all the great composers improvised, from Bach to Bartók. I believe that every work of music is governed by the trinity of improvisation, interpretation and composition, irrespective of whether we are talking about a grand orchestral classic or jazz.

GH: When you improvise, you are the composer as musician. But we have to play what the composer (even improvising in his head) wrote down.

We have to watch the conductor, look at the score, and so on. Of course it is vital to be strict. At the same time, playing Wagner, for instance, is a true sporting achievement: we start Götterdämmerung in the afternoon and finish at night. And we have to play a terrible number of notes, and what’s more, exclusively what has been written down. However, the result must be as though the music was born there and then.

Tamás Vajna

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Monday 11 November 2013 / 19.30

Tuesday 12 November 2013 / 19.30

Grand Hall

Grand Hall

Danubia Orchestra Óbuda

Steve Reich at the Liszt Academy

Liszt: Mazeppa Liszt: Hungarian Fantasy Orff: Carmina Burana

Steve Reich: Mallet Quartet Steve Reich: Double Sextet Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians

Ivett Gyöngyösi (piano), Rita Rácz (soprano), Attila Serbán (tenor), Zoltán Bátki Fazekas (baritone) Danubia Orchestra Óbuda; Kodály Choir Debrecen (Zoltán Pad – choir master) István Silló (conductor)

Contemporary Music Ensemble of the Liszt Academy Zoltán Rácz (conductor)

This popular concert programme is one way Danubia Orchestra Óbuda, who mark exactly 20 years playing together this year, are saying thank you to their followers who have watched them grow from a company made up of youthful talents into one of the country’s most significant orchestras. The presence of conductor István Silló, who has amassed considerable theatrical experience, guarantees that these especially theatrical works will truly fly. The symphonic poem Mazeppa is one of Liszt’s transcendent piano etudes transcribed for orchestra.

Hungarian Fantasy is no less moving: a piano concerto demanding enormous virtuosity. Here it highlights the skills of a truly outstanding talent of the youngest pianist generation, Ivett Gyöngyösi. It will be no easy task to surpass the elemental sweep of these two works, but Carl Orff’s now iconic Carmina Burana stands a good chance of achieving just that.

Steve Reich is an icon of contemporary music, the father of minimal music and an honorary professor of the Liszt Academy since 2006. In his music he rediscovers the experience of sound from the simplicity of endlessly repeated base melodies through variations in rhythm, and indeed in many cases, without any exaggeration, complete reinterprets the concept of music.

Zoltán Rácz is not only one of the world’s most accomplished interpreters of Reich’s ground-breaking compositions, but he is also a master of percussion instruments (notably as leader of the Amadinda Percussion Group, now approaching its third decade of music-making), as well as being associate professor at the Liszt Academy.

He has enjoyed a professional relationship with Reich lasting nearly 25 years, during which time they have become close friends, and Amadinda regularly perform works by the American genius. What’s more, the apparently light composition Mallet Quartet, which is in fact highly complex in its playfulness, was written specifically for Amadinda to mark the 25th anniversary of the ensemble.

Tickets: HUF 3 100, 2 400, 1 700, 1 000 Organizer: Óbudai Danubia Nonprofit Ltd.

Tickets: HUF 4 900, 3 500, 2 100 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Steve Reich (2003) © Andrea Felvégi

On the Borderland of Artwork and Ritual In City Life, a concert film shot in 1995, Steve Reich speaks about his most important musical influences. During this conversation he essentially mentions in the same breath Bach and Charlie Parker, Bartók and the sirens of New York fire engines, Stravinsky and African drumming. While Bach, Bartók and Stravinsky influenced him as a teenager, he came across the others as a mature musician. During the early years of his music studies he looked at – as he puts it, “slightly simplified” – piano works of Haydn and Mozart and never thought for one second that he would dedicate his life to music.

Then at some time in the early 1950s he heard Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 and the greats of bebop: saxophonist Charlie Parker and drummer Kenny Clarke. “Suddenly a room that I had never seen before opened. I walked into the room, and I never really left.”

His radical departure from the concepts of Classical-Romantic music is a regular topic in Reich portraits and interviews. In one of his articles, Richard Taruskin wrote that the common denominator of the “Russian style” of Stravinsky, the music of Bach and of bebop, that is, the continuous “sub-tactile pulse” lying beneath the level of the “felt beat”, which defines the musical process, is the essential creative component of the Reich oeuvre.

At the same time it is by no means irrelevant that, in that particular room, Reich met with the sort of music that needed only to be listened to and not explained. As far as he is concerned, the literary and philosophical concept of music that was largely established in the 19th century was always foreign to his ear, and has always remained so. On his arrival in Europe in the 1970s, he came face to face with the realization that European musicians did not really know what to do with his music. “They had simply no idea how to play my music. They were brought up with the Darmstadt school, which can be considered the successor of German Romanticism,” he said in an interview in Budapest a few years ago.

He spent his childhood on the Upper West Side of New York’s Central Park. During the 1940s, Reich recalled: “a kid like me spent the whole day in the street. There was no need to worry about something bad happening; we could travel on the subway alone, and if the chance presented itself, we could go to the movies by ourselves, too; while the ball games played in the street – to the annoyance of the neighbours – only had to be stopped very occasionally because of the passing of a car. If a police car or fire engine went anywhere in the city with its siren on, we could hear it from miles away.

Then as the level of background noise of the city began to rise, sirens had to be increased in volume, and today they scream at 110-120 decibels.”

Another sound memory that can similarly be traced back to childhood – which became a style-shaping musical moment like a sort of acoustic flashback – is the rhythm of the seemingly infinite railroad network (between the east and west coasts): the monotonous and yet unpredictable clattering of the rails and the points, the slowing down and speeding up of the cars.

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Debut of the Amadinda Percussion Group (1984) © István Cser / MTI

Perhaps it is no coincidence that he found the raw material for his first independent works on the street. It’s Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966) are textual compositions made for taping (the former is a recording of the speech of a street preacher which was then rearranged) in which the peculiarities and possibilities of the “instrument” (a tape recorder) play a defining role. Later on Reich – who from the perspective of music always considered the concert performance format the ideal solution – started writing pieces that could even be played on instruments in which the acoustic surface showed some resemblance to the acoustic pattern of It’s Gonna Rain and Come Out. Thus were born such emblematic works as Piano Phase and Violin Phase (1967), designed to be performed with a phasing shift, slipping out of sync.

In Piano Phase, Reich uses just the first five notes of a minor scale in a sophisticated clustering. The two pianists play exactly the same phrase.

One of them plays at the same tempo from beginning to end, while the other occasionally speeds up a little, right up to the point that he acquires an advantage in rhythm. It is as though two tape recorders are playing the same music at slightly different speeds. The piece was born out of the alternation of regular sections and transitional, irregular and thus enormously complex sections, yet always displaying new connections to the parts, and the scoring of which consists of just a single line of staves and not particularly loquacious instructions. It has to be played until it gets back to the starting point. The monumental summarization of this compositional technique is Drumming, written in 1970-71, and which has been performed in Hungary by the Amadinda Percussion Group on several occasions. “The composition stands on the borderland between artwork and ritual, and this can hardly be disputed,” wrote music critique György Kroó after the premiere in Hungary of the work (1986), “and we can certainly believe that its modernity is fed from the life-force of a culture many thousands of years old,” while at the same time it also represented the extremely exciting conclusion to a style era.

In later compositions the eternal pulsation began to carry harmonic processes. Music for 18 Musicians (1974-76) is one of the best examples of this new endeavour, presented here in Hungary by Group 180 and Amadinda.

The now legendary Liszt Academy concert recording from 1990 was released in 2003. One of its peculiarities is that the musicians learned the piece without a proper copy of the score. “I wrote the piece in a kind of musical shorthand directly into my music notebook. The parts themselves were also in shorthand that was only fully intelligible with considerable oral explanation: spoken, then finally jotted down, i.e. ‘Look at Russ!’ etc. The result was that from 1976 until the late 1990s – when Marc Mellits and I gave Boosey & Hawkes a final, full score – the piece was not played by another ensemble except my own. The sole exception is Amadinda. Members and friends of the Hungarian group took the original parts, the recording, and by expending a huge amount of time researching these sources they came up with the modalities of the music-performance execution.”

The close bond between Reich and Hungarian musicians has remained strong ever since. The composer himself has been present at several premiers of his work in Budapest, and the composition Mallet Quartet was written specifically for Amadinda. Steve Reich has been an honorary professor of the Liszt Academy since December 2006.

Szabolcs Molnár 39

The Cradle of Hungarian Classical Music This prestigious institution embraces an art university, the Liszt Academy, as well as the Liszt Academy Concert Centre, and these two major activities – teaching and performing – merge in harmony at the joint concerts of students and teachers. Vice-President Andrea Vigh sees, as both artist and professor, huge opportunities in this kind of cooperation.

As a renowned performing artist, do you find it strange to step out of the usual student-professor relationship and share the stage with the Academy’s young musicians?

I have never found it difficult to treat the students as equal partners. From the moment we step onto the stage together, I regard them as accomplished artists and real colleagues. The concerts are always preceded by long and arduous preparation, and during this period we not only teach our students the right techniques and musical articulation, but we also train them how to improve their stage presence, and how to accept success and failure.

What are the criteria you use when determining which students will have an opportunity to perform at these special events?

Concert organization and career development are specialized fields of the music industry; however, the selection and promotion of the most talented students of the Academy is the responsibility of the teachers, who execute this not merely as a profession but a real vocation. So, the students who get a chance to make their debut in the Liszt Academy Concert Centre are recommended by the professors, while the staff of the Concert Centre – as well as that of the soon-to-be-opened career office – provide them with a solid professional background, and help them advance their careers. For someone who proves to be exceptionally talented and is able to grasp his/ her opportunities, graduation from the Academy will not only mean a degree but also “start-up capital” for a future career. I truly believe that this kind of duality, and the unparalleled opportunities it entails, put the Liszt Academy into a very privileged position, and our unique model can serve as an example in the international music scene as well.

These are really nice plans, but do you think this dual framework can be continued in the long term?

In the long run, our institution can operate effectively if the educational and concert organization activities of the Liszt Academy can fuse and support each other, and if the custodians provides guaranteed sustenance for both areas. We have a good chance of achieving it too, since the decision makers also appreciate our efforts to represent the highest values in music education, the Liszt Academy being the cradle where the greatest musicians of Hungary are raised.

Dániel Végh

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Andrea Vigh Š Marjai Judit

Thursday 14 November 2013 / 19.30

Sunday 17 November 2013 / 19.30

Grand Hall

Grand Hall

Génie Oblige!

– 138th Anniversary Gala of the Liszt Academy Péter Zombola: Long ride in a fast machine Weiner: Romance, Op. 29 Haydn: Symphony no. 38 in C Major (“Echo”) Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat major Liszt: Les Préludes Andrea Vigh (harp), Ivett Gyöngyösi (piano), Csaba Onczay (cello) Symphony Orchestra of the Liszt Academy Gábor Takács-Nagy (conductor) It is by now a tradition that the Liszt Academy commemorates the anniversary of its foundation at this time every year. This year the event is made all the more special since a reincarnated Liszt Academy is itself the magnificent object of, and perfect venue for, the anniversary gala.

And there is certainly a lot to celebrate given that over the past 138 years the institution, renowned across Europe, has lost not one iota of its prestige; indeed, it continues to develop and expand. As Ferenc Liszt so notably said, Génie oblige! And there can be no cause for complaint at the array of talent on display at this birthday gala. Patron and eponym Ferenc Liszt and another legendary professor, Leó Weiner, are represented by their works, while from the corps of distinguished professors of today the superb cellist Csaba Onczay and harpist Andrea Vigh, who is also vice-rector, further invigorate the evening’s experience.

Tickets: HUF 3 900, 2 800, 1 700 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre 42

Black and White Colours Pianist Generations Mozart: Sonata for Two Pianos in D major (K. 375/a) – Movement 2 (Andante) Schumann: Toccata, Op. 7 Liszt: Réminiscences de Don Juan Chopin: Andante spianato et Grande Polonaise brillante, Op. 22 Liszt: Vallée d’Obermann Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 15 Chopin: Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23 Rachmaninoff: Moment Musical in B minor, Op. 16/3 Rachmaninoff: Moment Musical in E minor, Op. 16/4 Liszt: Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude Brahms: Sixteen Waltzes, Op. 39 (excerpts) Brahms: Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Op. 56/b Ivett Gyöngyösi, Gergely Bogányi, Kálmán Dráfi, Zsolt Medgyesi, László Váradi, Tamás Vásáry (piano) The piano tradition of the Liszt Academy can be traced back in a direct line to the founding father of the institution, Ferenc Liszt. Béla Bartók studied under István Thomán, who himself was a student of Liszt, while the giant of piano teaching of the mid-20 th century Pál Kadosa taught the likes of Zoltán Kocsis, Dezső Ránki and András Schiff.

Thus the concert is a chance for us to be eye witnesses to this unbroken and still thriving tradition, in the course of which different generations of Hungarian pianists exchange seats at the keyboard of an instrument that has shaped their lives. From Tamás Vásáry and Gergely Bogányi through to the most promising of younger talents, not forgetting, naturally, the current head of the Keyboard Department Kálmán Dráfi, this parade of excellent Hungarian pianists represents a genuine celebration of the piano.

Tickets: HUF 5 400, 4 300, 2 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Masters and Disciples It would be no easy thing to compute the sum legacy of the school for pianists fathered by Ferenc Liszt; indeed, it would be far easier to list those workshops that are not directly connected to the master. Every one of the great piano schools that reached their apogee in the 20 th century, from Berlin and Vienna to Budapest and Moscow, won their renown in the wake of the skills of Liszt pupils: Alexander Siloti, Hans von Bülow, Józef Wieniawski, Emil Sauer, Moriz Rosenthal, István Thomán, to name but a few of the most important.

While teaching is foreign to many celebrated performers, Liszt spent virtually his entire life giving instruction: as a teenager, dealing with the offspring of the aristocracy was a matter of earning a living, though later on he never accepted money for tuition, and indeed he himself gave financial support to numerous students in penurious positions. It is a little known fact that the Liszt Academy was not his first, nor only, such position: the foundation in 1835 of the Geneva Conservatory, one of Europe’s oldest music academies, coincided with Liszt’s unexpected residence there – the pregnancy of Marie d’Agoult forced the couple’s sudden departure from Paris and the lovers chose Geneva as their hideout – and the young Liszt was appointed the first piano professor of the new institution.

Forty years later, in 1875, Liszt was appointed president of the Budapest Music Academy, thereby setting in motion the work that is, for us, perhaps Liszt’s most important legacy. The elderly Liszt participated in the teaching with energy that belied his years. The results speak for themselves: even if Liszt himself never lived to see Budapest raised from virtual obscurity to one of the music capitals of Europe, in the space of just a few decades this wonder became reality.

In the afterglow of the work of the two most important Hungarian first-generation Liszt piano students, István Thomán and Árpád Szendy, the second generation became truly stellar: besides Ernő Dohnányi and Béla Bartók, we ought also to mention György Ferenczy, Imre KeériSzántó and Arnold Székely. Then came their successors: Géza Anda, Annie Fischer, Andor Földes, Lajos Hernádi, Pál Kadosa, György Sándor, György Sebők. The careers behind these names would each merit their own biography. And, of course, there are those who have come after them… but any attempt to list them here would stray into the domain of lexicographers. Let us content ourselves with just five names that will undoubtedly be familiar to us all: Zoltán Kocsis, Dezső Ránki, András Schiff, Péter Frankl, and Tamás Vásáry. One thing is certain: the pianist generation that graduated around the turn of the millennium, or is still attending the Liszt Academy – everyone from Gergely Bogányi to László Váradi and Ivett Gyöngyösi – that is, the fifth Liszt generation, certainly have something to live up to.

Dávid Zsoldos 43

Monday 18 November 2013 / 19.30

Tuesday 19 November 2013 / 19.30

Grand Hall

Grand Hall

Beyond music…

Tamás Vásáry’s Musical Conversations IV/1 Works of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra Tamás Vásáry (lecturer, conductor & featuring on piano)

Tamás Vásáry © Kata Schiller

Tamás Vásáry plays piano, conducts and talks about music. Anyone who has ever attended one of his events will know all too well that it is not easy to decide what is the greatest and most elemental experience: the piano performance of this superb and popular artist, his skills wielding the baton, or his personal and instructive insights into music. This time Tamás Vásáry’s musical conversation revolves around the life and work of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Through performance of his work and insights into his life, so painfully awash in repression and personal tragedies, the real Tchaikovsky is revealed to us all.

From Tchaikovsky’s remarkable musical universe, we are presented with melodies so intoxicating that we need reminding of the masterful skill in action within the musical structure of each and every work of this celebrated composer.

Tickets: HUF 3 500, 2 800, 2 000, 1 500 Students and concessions: HUF 2 500, 2 000, 1 400, 1 100 Organizer: Hungarian Radio Music Ensembles

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Piano Concert

by Endre Hegedűs Schumann: Introduction and Allegro appassionato, op. 92 Schumann: Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54 Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major, Op. 83 Endre Hegedűs (piano) Dohnányi Orchestra Budafok Gábor Hollerung (conductor) For many, many years now it has been inconceivable to consider a Budapest concert season without the romantic piano recitals of Endre Hegedűs.

“I try, through my music and my life, to follow in the footsteps of my great role model, Ferenc Liszt, marvelling at his strength of character, humanity and endless willingness to help.”

Thus avows this illustrious pianist – worthy holder of the prize named after Liszt – who at this concert plays three orchestral piano works of the romantic era with fellow musician Gábor Hollerung and his orchestra.

Tickets: HUF HUF 4 500, 3 500, 2 500 Organizer: Stúdió Liszt Ltd.

Wednesday 20 November 2013 / 19.30

Thursday 21 November 2013 / 19.30

Grand Hall

Grand Hall

On The Spot – The Jazz Department Featuring former and current students of the Jazz Department: Ágnes Lakatos, Tamás Berki (vocals); Kristóf Bacsó, Mihály Borbély, István Elek (saxophone); János Hámori (trumpet); Károly Friedrich (trombone); Károly Binder, Béla Faragó, Tibor Márkus, Kálmán Oláh, György Regály, Áron Tálas (piano); Gyula Babos, Sándor Horányi, Attila László (guitar); Béla Lattmann (bass); Tibor Csuhaj-Barna, Tibor Fónai (double bass); Béla Zsoldos (percussion); Ákos Benkó, György Jeszenszky (drums)

50 Years of the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra Bartók: Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (BB 114) Schubert: String Quintet in C major (D. 956 – Transcription for String Orchestra) Amadinda Percussion Group Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra János Rolla (artistic director)

The story of jazz tuition in Hungary goes back close on half a century. Indeed, Hungary was among the first in Europe to integrate into the state music school system the institutionalized teaching of the genre, initially at intermediate, then at primary level, and culminating in the launch of a high school department in the early 1990s. Both sides of this emancipation process have, so to speak, proved themselves: the Jazz Department proved that it was possible to teach and examine this “free music style” to a thorough and professional standard; and the Liszt Academy proved it was open to the new. There can be no doubt of the latter, as testified by the distinguished roll of graduates old and new, among whom many have returned to their alma mater as professors. As a consequence of this nurturing of talent, there are many in Europe who speak of “Hungarian jazz” as a discrete sub-genre.

The entire history (all 50 years) of the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra has been characterized by the harmonious union of unbroken tradition and consistent renewal.

Right back in the early days, final year students of the Liszt Academy would get together to play music under the direction of their influential professor, Frigyes Sándor. The ensemble rapidly outgrew its role as a student orchestra.

János Rolla, who has held the office of artistic director since 1979, and his fellow musicians created a globe-trotting and globally renowned orchestra in the 1970s, in the process making landmark recordings and regularly performing with the very best instrumental soloists of the period (the likes of Maurice André, Isaac Stern and Jean-Pierre Rampal, to name but three). Throughout, they have maintained their own character and unmistakable string orchestra tonalities – and this amidst a consistent and carefully structured rejuvenation over the past decade.

Tickets: HUF 3 900, 2 800, 1 700 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Tickets: HUF 9 900, 7 900, 6 000, 4 500 Organizer: Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra

János Rolla (1988) © Gábor Fejér

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Segment through the axis of the Great Hall © The Hungarian Museum of Science, Technology and Transport Audience of the 1945 Menuhin concert © Károly Escher / Hungarian National Museum

Evening with the literary magazine “Nyugat” (1932) © MTI 46

Sviatoslav Richter (1958) © Antal Kotnyek / Fortepan

Detail of the reliefs of the main facade (1940s) © Budapest City Archives

Relief draft of the facade by Ede Telcs © Metropolitan Ervin Szabó Library, Budapest Collection 47

Friday 22 November 2013 / 19.00

Saturday 23 November 2013 / 15.30

Saturday 23 November 2013 / 19.30

Grand Hall

Grand Hall

Grand Hall

Zugló Philharmonic Mendelssohn: The Hebrides – Overture, Op. 26 Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64 Miklós Kocsár: Magnificat J. S. Bach: Magnificat in E flat major (BWV 243a)

MÁV Symphony Orchestra Liszt: Les Préludes Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Op. 21 Dvořák: Legends, Op. 59 Rimsky-Korsakov: Capriccio Espagnol, Op. 34 Endre Hegedűs (piano) MÁV Symphony Orchestra Gergely Kesselyák (conductor)

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Featuring: Áron Dóczi (violin); Katalin Vámosi, Ildikó Földesi (soprano); Eszter Balogh (alto); Zoltán Megyesi (tenor); Domonkos Blazsó (bass) Cantemus Choir Nyíregyháza, Zugló Philharmonic – Szent István Király Symphony Orchestra Soma Szabó (conductor)

Dohnányi Orchestra Budafok Haydn: Symphony No. 96 in D major (‘The Miracle’) Dohnányi: Variations on a Nursery Song, Op. 25 Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36 Jenő Jandó (piano) Dohnányi Orchestra Budafok Gábor Hollerung (conductor)

This concert by the MÁV Symphony Orchestra transports the audience through the varied landscapes of Romanticism as – in the best sense of the word – hit follows hit.

Les Préludes, possibly the most popular symphonic poem of Ferenc Liszt, is first on the programme.

The principal part of Chopin’s Piano Concerto in F minor is played by Endre Hegedűs, a particularly active and committed interpreter of Romantic piano music. The audience are then presented with a truly astonishing discovery in the form of Dvořák’s Legends, a work that was originally a piano quartet.

The working relationship between Gergely Kesselyák and MÁV Symphony Orchestra has lasted for two decades. The conductor, who is also an outstanding opera conductor (not to mention opera director), has long been one of the favourites of season ticket holders of the orchestra.

The Zugló Philharmonic, who are approaching their 60th birthday and are currently proud holders of the title National Youth Orchestra, stage a special performance of two instrumental compositions by Mendelssohn, accompanied by two Magnificat arrangements. The Hebrides Overture recounts the personal experiences of a 21-year-old Mendelssohn in Scotland, while the Violin Concerto in E minor is one of the last works of the composer.

After the intermission the orchestra are joined by the excellent Cantemus Choir of Nyíregyháza, who are worthy guardians of the spirit and choral traditions of Zoltán Kodály. Kossuth Prize winner Miklós Kocsár composed his piece, which is based on a medieval Marian hymn, specifically for the chorus.

Finally, we hear the early variation in E flat major of J. S. Bach’s Magnificat.

Conductor for the evening is Cantemus artistic director Soma Szabó, who graduated from the Liszt Academy and is active there as conductor and professor.

The Dohnányi Orchestra Budafok, conducted by Gábor Hollerung, insert a composition by Ernő Dohnányi into an evening of classical and romantic symphony. This monumental series of variations based a nursery song known throughout Europe is perhaps the wittiest work of the former director of the Liszt Academy and piano virtuoso, who in his time was acclaimed the world over. It is a true piano concerto.

The devilishly difficult principal part is played by Jenő Jandó, who has been a professor of music at the Liszt Academy for close on four decades (and thus a successor of Dohnányi). Jandó is one of Hungary’s most renowned and sought-after pianists, an artist who holds both the Liszt Prize and the Kossuth Prize, as well as the award of Hungarian Artist of Excellence. His recordings have made him a household name on the international stage. Jandó has long performed in partnership with Gábor Hollerung and their joint concerts are always a marvellous experience. This occasion promises to be no different.

Tickets: HUF 4 000, 3 500, 3 000 Organizer: MÁV Symphony Orchestra

Tickets: HUF 2 100, 1 800, 1 500 Organizer: Zugló Philharmonic

Tickets: HUF 2 500, 1 800, 1 200 Organizer: Dohnányi Orchestra Budafok

Choose your experience!

Sunday 24 November 2013 / 19.30

Monday 25 November 2013 / 19.30

Grand Hall

Grand Hall

Saturday 30 November 2013 10.30 and 15.00

Grand Hall Budapest Gypsy Symphony Orchestra Return to the Liszt Academy after 25 years Rossini: William Tell – overture Brahms: Hungarian Dance No. 5 Erkel: Hunyadi László – Palotás Monti: Csárdás Hubay: Waves on Lake Balaton Transylvanian tunes for cimbalom Balkan Gypsy music Brahms: Hungarian Dance No. 1 Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker – Waltz of the Flowers Sarasate: Gypsy Airs J. Strauss: Gypsy Baron – overture Dinicu: Hora staccato Dinicu: Skylark Budapest Gypsy Symphony Orchestra Guest: Roby Lakatos (violin) Artistic Director: Sándor Buffo Rigó First violin: József Lendvai Csócsi Director: Nándor Beke Farkas What exactly is Gypsy music?

There can be few more difficult concepts to define than this. Firstly, perhaps it is not so much a music genre as performance style. A mixture of extreme virtuosity, maximum flexibility and total freedom.

It is a global marvel and true Hungarikum.

Liszt, Debussy, Stravinsky and Yehudi Menuhin raved about it, and millions all over the world still do. The Gypsy Symphony Orchestra founded in 1985 are the most authentic representatives of the style, they have gone past their thousandth concert and return to the Liszt Academy after a break of 25 years.

The programme of classical music compositions, genuine Gypsy melodies and popular tunes promises to make for a dazzling concert.

Tickets: HUF 10 990, 8 990, 7 990 Organizer: Budapest Gypsy Symphony Orchestra Cultural Association 50

Chamber Music – Tuned for Grand Hall Mozart Evening with Péter Frankl Mozart: Piano Quartet in G minor (K. 478) Mozart: Quintet in E flat major for Piano and Winds (K. 452) Mozart: Trio in E flat major for Piano, Clarinet and Viola (K. 498, ‘Kegelstatt’) Mozart: Piano Quartet in E flat major (K. 493) Péter Frankl (piano), András Keller (violin), Péter Bársony (viola), István Várdai (cello), Béla Horváth (oboe), Zsolt Szatmári (clarinet), Zoltán Szőke (French horn), György Lakatos (bassoon) Both parents of Péter Frankl studied at the Liszt Academy, and the sevenyear-old wunderkind was himself placed in the class for specially talented pupils; he eventually went on to become one of the prides of the Liszt Academy.

In 1972, after a long enforced absence, Péter Frankl returned to Hungary and the Grand Hall. From that time, the domestic audience has enjoyed his inspirational piano playing in many magnificent and memorable concerts.

The 78-year-old artist, who maintains to this day a remarkable dynamism, shares the Grand Hall of the Liszt Academy with a company of outstanding musicians and with a Mozart programme enchanting in its homogeneity.

Tickets: HUF 4 900, 3 500, 2 100 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Story-telling Music Tales of the Liszt Academy Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 Erkel: Hunyadi László – Palotás Dohnányi: Variations on a Nursery Song, Op. 25 Bartók: Hungarian Pictures (BB 103) – excerpts Weiner: Divertimento, Op. 20 – excerpts Kodály: Dances from Marosszék Krisztina Fejes (piano) Savaria Symphony Orchestra Ádám Medveczky (conductor) Presenter: Gergely Fazekas During this philharmonic youth concert the stories and secrets of the magical building of the Liszt Academy on Liszt Ferenc Square are brought to life. Where does the spirit of music reside in this 106-year-old palace of sound? What meaning lies behind the various mysterious ornamental elements?

Why does the Grand Hall sound different to any other concert hall in the world?

What happens to those who drink from the Fountain of Youth and what does this have to do with music? This concert seeks to provide answers to these riddles.

During the production the stories are linked to each other in works by illustrious composers with associations to the Liszt Academy, reviving a remarkable tradition that is embodied in the globally renowned professors of the academy: Liszt, Erkel, Dohnányi, Kodály and Bartók.

Tickets: HUF 1 400 Organizer: Filharmónia Budapest Ltd. & Liszt Academy

Miklós Perényi (left) with his friends (1958) © Molnár Edit / MTI

Géza Anda – Troubadour of the Wire Cabinet

Herbert von Karajan & Géza Anda (1968) © Géza Anda Stiftung 52

We find ourselves in a chamber music class in the Liszt Academy, in room XXIII, sometime in the middle of the last century. The students commence playing and the bespectacled professor listens for a short while. A few minutes later he motions for them to stop. He turns to the young virtuoso violinist who is considered an exceptional talent by his fellow students.

“Did anyone ever tell you, son, that you play the violin very well?”

The answer is suitably modest, “Yes, professor.” At which point the professor replies, “Don’t believe them!”

This master of legendary severity was Leo Weiner. The students were terrified of him and yet they flocked to his classes. Among them was the young Géza Anda. Later he recalled that he learned most about the essence of music from Weiner. The other musician who defined the artistic career of Anda was Ernő Dohnányi. The boy was just eight when he heard one of Dohnányi’s youth concerts. His parents preferred he choose a “proper” profession, for example, teaching. However, the magic of Dohnányi playing the piano that evening captivated the child to such an extent that after a while even his parents gave up their hopeless struggle.

In 1933, at the age of 12, Géza Anda started regular musical studies under the direction of Imre Stefániai, Emánuel Hegyi and Imre Keéri-Szántó.

Finally, in 1939 he was admitted to the Dohnányi masters’ school. The then director of the Liszt Academy was not such an exacting teacher as Weiner.

He had little to say in classes; instead he sat at the piano and demonstrated what he expected of his pupils. In this he perfectly complemented the Weiner school. Anda acquired his generous elegancy and the virtually disembodied beauty of his piano sound from him.

Soon he was performing in front of an audience: he played the Piano Concerto in B flat by Brahms, with the orchestra under the baton of no less a genius than Willem Mengelberg. In the wake of his stunning Budapest debut, first place in the Liszt competition in 1940, and completion of masters’ school, the 20-year-old musician continued his studies with a state scholarship in Berlin. Here, too, Fortuna did not abandon him.

An elderly lady observed his talent and invited him to a soirée. Tea, cakes, a little piano playing and chat with a few ladies. Not really the ideal scene for a 20-year-old. Anda tried to excuse himself from further invitations, but eventually relented and went again. This time his performance deeply impressed another lady, who was none other than the wife of Wilhelm Furtwängler. “Willy, you must hear this!” Like a good husband, he obeyed and was forced to admit that his wife was quite right. Another concert, this time with the Berlin Philharmonic. The performance of Symphonic Variations by César Franck so captured the famous conductor that he dubbed the young pianist the “troubadour of the piano”.

It was a glittering start to a career – but fate was to take a twist. Anda had no desire to visit the picturesque Don Bend by bicycle, choosing instead

poverty in neutral Switzerland. There is no irony intended in the previous sentence, since at the beginning, his life in Switzerland was truly penurious: he was looked upon as a barely tolerated refugee, nothing more. Concert halls started reopening their doors to him at the end of the 1940s. In 1951, he appeared at the famous Salzburg Festival. The characteristic Budapest cocktail (Dohnányi + Weiner), combined with astounding virtuosity, had its impact here too. Anda became a world star. Flights, luxury hotels.

At the beginning it was pure adventure – and then increasingly a tiring routine. Meanwhile he held masterclasses in Salzburg, Lucerne (as successor to Edwin Fischer), and later in Zurich.

In his youth Anda primarily stuck to playing the Romantic masterpieces of the genre. Bartók joined this repertoire. There were occasions when he played all three of Bartók’s piano concertos in a single evening. He played the Piano Concert No. 2 nearly 300 times at public concerts. Then came Mozart.

In a short time Anda recorded all of Mozart’s piano concertos, he himself directed the orchestra (similarly to Edwin Fischer), and he composed the missing cadenzas. This series of recordings was also considered a model of its kind until the practice of historical performance became widely fashionable. Anda did not agree with this latter approach. “It gets on my nerves when people think that they have the telephone number of Bach or Beethoven,” he once commented. He had a healthy amount of selfawareness in him: he knew that he was one of the best. He believed it was his task to learn the works as thoroughly as possible, and to form his concept of their ideal performance. Only in this way could he bring to life the score set down on paper, how he could breathe life into the piano or, as he called it once in an interview, the “wire cabinet”.

He revisited the land of his birth in 1967. His Budapest appearance was preceded by huge expectation, and he proved a massive success.

“There are only very few similarly attractive piano sounds in the world,” enthused György Kroó, the most influential critic of the day. Nobody suspected at that time that Anda’s days on this earth were numbered.

In his final years he dealt primarily with Chopin; he completed a wonderful recording of the waltzes. His memory is also preserved in film recordings, as he speaks about Chopin by the piano at his home, illustrating his comments by casually running through a few devilishly difficult passages with the inevitable cigarette in his mouth. This is probably one of the reasons that he never lived to see his 55th birthday. géza anda (1967) © endre schwanner

Sándor Kovács

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Friday 29 November 2013 / 19.30

Saturday 30 November 2013 / 19.00

Grand Hall

Chamber Hall

Géza Anda Festival Winners of the 2012 Concours Géza Anda Mozart: Piano Concerto in B flat major (K. 595) Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat major, Op. 73 (‘Emperor’) Schumann: Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54 Varvara Nepomnyashchaya, Elmar Gasanov, Da Sol Kim (piano) Concerto Budapest András Keller (conductor)

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Géza Anda Festival Piano Recital

by Alexei Volodin Chopin: 24 Preludes, Op. 28 Chopin: Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23 Chopin: Nocturne in B major, Op. 9/3 Chopin: Nocturne in C sharp minor, Op. posth.

Chopin: Scherzo No. 3 in C sharp minor, Op. 39 Chopin: Andante spianato et Grande Polonaise brillante, Op. 22 Alexei Volodin (piano)

Although he was allotted only a short life, the memory of great Hungarian pianist Géza Anda (1921–1976) remains very much alive to this day. One of the greatest geniuses of the piano of the last century, he was equally famed as a professor of music and a patron of young talented artists; thus it is truly apposite that his memory should be preserved not only by the very many recordings of his but also by a pianist competition. The Géza Anda International Piano Competition organized in Zurich every three years, and the foundation that lies behind this, not only offer a significant cash prize to the top three in the competition, but also the opportunity to think of a long-term career. Géza Anda, one-time student of Kodály, Weiner and Dohnányi, and the pride of the Liszt Academy, is celebrated with a three-day series of events in the concert halls of the Liszt Academy.

The opening concert sees the three most recent, 2012, winners of the competition perform, accompanied by András Keller and Concerto Budapest, the resident orchestra of the Liszt Academy.

The festival showcasing the most recent and former winners of the Géza Anda International Piano Competition in Zurich celebrates one of the most exciting musicians of the 20th century, who started out from the Liszt Academy and reached the apogee of his career in Zurich. Géza Anda (1921–1976) was dubbed the troubadour of the piano

by Wilhelm Furtwängler, and this poetic and enthusiastic artistic personality is reflected today in Alexei Volodin, winner of the 2003 competition and member of the jury last year. The career of this 35-year-old Russian artist was given huge impetus by his competition win; he was invited to perform at concerts conducted by Riccardo Chailly, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Valery Gergiev and Carlo Rizzi, while he has also played in Budapest together with Zoltán Kocsis and the Hungarian National Philharmonic. Indeed, Volodin has already given a concert in the Grand Hall of the Liszt Academy, so in the shadow of his 2008 appearance this solo recital represents a return to the most distinguished venue on the Hungarian music scene.

Tickets: HUF 4 900, 3 500, 2 100 Organizer: Géza Anda Foundation, Honorary Consulate of Hungary (Zurich), Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Tickets: HUF 4 200, 2 800 Organizer: Géza Anda Foundation, Honorary Consulate of Hungary (Zurich), Liszt Academy Concert Centre

“There is always some kind of music playing in my head” He is recognized as one of the best pianists of today. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, the son of a military officer and an engineer mother, he discovered music by himself, as it was not part of the family’s everyday life. He started to play the piano at the age of 9, and one year later he was admitted to the Gnessin Academy of Music for exceptionally talented children.

He then studied at the Moscow Conservatoire with Elisso VirsaladzE, whom he considers as his most influential professor. Alexei Volodin is a very amiable and smiling interviewee, but he treasures his private life.

What was the first thing that came into your mind when you won the Géza Anda International Piano Competition in 2003?

I was thinking how many concerts I would have to give from then on, and how little time I could spend at home! Music is the meaning of my life, but I was also a bit intimidated. I will never forget that moment, as that was one of the happiest days in my life.

What is so special about the Géza Anda Piano Competition?

This concourse gives young musicians the opportunity to present themselves as serious artists. They have to learn a vast ClassicalRomantic repertoire: the piano pieces and piano concertos of Schubert, Schumann, Beethoven and Brahms. It is all the more exciting since the mastering of such a grand repertoire indicates who you are as a musician. And one more thing: to the first three prize winners of the Géza Anda Competition, the award also entails management services, including the arrangement of a plethora of concert performances for the next three years. At most music competitions, even if you win, you are left on your own afterwards – get by as you can! – but in this concourse they support your career, which is a quite unique and fantastic thing.

You said once in an interview that as a child you used to listen to your own melodies going on in your head before you fell asleep. Do you still have this inner radio as an adult?

Of course, there is always some kind of music playing in my head, whether it be classical, jazz, pop, or my own music.

In what ways do you think the audience is transformed by the tendency of most of the concertgoers of today to listen to much more pop than classical music?

I think it has always been like this. I have not had a long career, yet, but during this time I have not seen any significant change in the reactions of the audience. All we can do as musicians is to give the best of ourselves on the stage so that people who do not normally listen to classical music get to know and enjoy it.

Alexei Volodin © Marco Borggreve

Cecília Szőke

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Black Water Š Demeter Balla

Sunday 1 December 2013 / 11.00

Sunday 1 December 2013 / 19.30

Chamber Hall

Grand Hall

Géza Anda Festival Piano Recital by Filippo Gamba

Géza Anda Festival Piano Recital by Dénes Várjon

Schubert: Piano Sonata in A minor (D. 537) Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor, Op. 27/2 (‘Moonlight’) Chopin: Four Mazurkas, Op. 68 Brahms: Seven Fantasias, Op. 116

Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 12 in A flat major, Op. 26 Schumann: Fantasy Pieces, Op. 12 Liszt: Piano Sonata in B minor Várjon Dénes (piano)

Filippo Gamba (piano) Ever since the summer of 2000, when Filippo Gamba won first prize at the piano competition in Zurich named after charismatic Hungarian performer Géza Anda, the international career of the Italian has risen ever higher; living legend Vladimir Ashkenazy himself has spoken in superlatives of the talents of Gamba. The Veronese pianist has been invited to top concert venues in Europe from Berlin to Paris and Amsterdam, and he has worked together with globally-renowned orchestras and conductors, garnering rapturous applause wherever he appears.

His uniquely lyrical, bordering-on-thespiritually-poetic mode of expression, as well as his remarkably detailed and full-bodied tone, come as a revelation to the listener. His recordings are conclusive proof that he is just as inspired a performer of the music of Mozart and Beethoven as he is of the works of Schumann, Brahms and Mendelssohn, and his concerts also extend to compositions by Debussy and Bartók.

Dénes Várjon triumphed at the Géza Anda International Piano Competition in Zurich in 1991, and with this success he remains to this day the only Hungarian musician to have won this international contest, organized every three years.

Following the Beethoven Sonata in A flat major, the pianist, who as a student, teacher and concert performer – indeed organizer of a concert series – knows the Liszt Academy of Music inside out, brings to the podium two works by composers of particular significance to him. During a whole series of concerts over the past year, Dénes Várjon, both as soloist and at the invitation of fellow chamber musicians, has reflected on the art of Robert Schumann; likewise the Sonata in B minor by Ferenc Liszt, which winds up the concert, has a particularly important role in the current career of the musician. Dénes Várjon’s solo album Precipitando was released by record label ECM last year, the final track of which is this same Liszt work of renowned complexity, and which was in fact at one time dedicated to Schumann.

Tickets: HUF 3 200, 2 100 Organizer: Géza Anda Foundation, Honorary Consulate of Hungary (Zurich), Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Tickets: HUF 6 500, 5 400, 3 800 Organizer: Géza Anda Foundation, Honorary Consulate of Hungary (Zurich), Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Dénes Várjon © Pilvax Studio

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The Adventure of Reconstruction “Despite its mass, Budapest’s first reinforced concrete public building is, from a structural aspect, a surprisingly delicate creation; its designer did not give it a huge safety margin and yet we have not found a single instance of decline in its state that can be traced back to its structural design.” This statement is from chief engineer Gergely Lakatos who informed us about the reconstruction work on the Liszt Ferenc Square building, which was originally planned to be in pompous Neo-Baroque style but, luckily for later ages, was finally constructed in Art Nouveau style. According to Lakatos, the expert who coordinated the project right from the very start, the original building engineer Szilárd Zielinski calculated with a precision particularly noteworthy even from today’s standard; he did not think in terms of heavy-handed, excessive reserves.

A pioneer of reinforced concrete architecture in Hungary, transport and public works structures dominated Zielinski’s work (including Városligeti Bridge, inaugurated in 1869); thus, unsurprisingly, both safety and economy were significant factors in his planning. Several of his bridges share the same structural solutions employed in the Liszt Academy; the roof structure of the building employed classical joiner’s techniques but here with beams and ties made from concrete and reinforced concrete. The skeleton of the music palace is still considered an engineering marvel, as in those days they had neither concrete mixers nor high performance concrete pumps available – not to speak of high-end computers capable of precisely calculating static strengths as well as modelling all possible eventualities.

In 2011, after lengthy preparation before the reconstruction work itself, the team of experts was able to uncover structural problems in only two areas: cracks running the length of the internal wall of the main façade bearing the Liszt statue (which weighs several tonnes), and earlier repairs carried out in the roof structure of the wing of the building. “The cracks may have been caused by an earlier fault in the water piping, while asides from the original insufficient waterproofing, damage caused during the war may have contributed to the decline in the state of the roof structure,” commented Lakatos. Based on structural research preceding commencement of the work, which was unprecedented in Hungary in its detail, the reconstruction took in rehabilitation of the original structures, and also extended to those elements with problems which, though invisible to the naked eye, did not comply with calculations based on current European Union regulations.

Architectural planners Éva Magyari, Béla Pazár and Ferenc Potzner were faced with a significant challenge in the structuring of the internal spaces of the building and in its functional arrangement, particularly in the basement and levels above the second floor, areas less well known to the general public. Part of the reason for this is that these areas were rebuilt and reconstituted in the 1910s after the building had been inaugurated; the institution of higher education founded by Ferenc Liszt expanded 58

The reconstruction in numbers

Number of builders

1100 Number of chief engineers

62 1500 m3 demolition material 8350 m3 new concrete 415 m3 new wood 570 tonnes of reinforced steel 74 tonnes of installed hot rolled steel fittings 183 km of installed electric cable piping 211 km of installed low voltage cables 24 km of installed heating, cooling, water and sewage piping 5 km of air ducts

3500 m2 installed terrazzo cladding 3950 m2 installed special acoustic cladding 3600 m2 installed parquet flooring 2830 m2 restored stone facades 400 m2 covered with Zsolnay tiling 5658 m2 decorative painted areas 3025 m2 protected plaster-rabitz areas 460 m2 velvet upholstery (Grand Hall) 240 m2 drapery (Grand Hall) 367 m2 of stained glass surfaces 44 stained glass windows 1076 new windows fitted with sound, heat insulation glass 90 restored bronze sculptures and decorative elements

dramatically, there was an explosion in the number of enrolled students, and consequently there was ever greater demand for classrooms, as well as storage space due to library acquisitions. Service apartments were among the first to be sacrificed on the altar of education, and then the grandiose first floor residence of the director also went.

Ad hoc alterations to the building began in the 1930s and were concluded in the 1950s and ‘60s. The Chamber Hall, which originally had a rigging loft, safety curtain and orchestral pit, suffered most from the addition of outdated materials and use of unprofessional solutions, with the damage hampering its functionality. Storerooms were set up in place of the orchestral pit and understage, while the rigging loft was split up into classrooms.

In order to offset the damage this did to the acoustics, a “sounding board” was installed in the hall, although it did not bring about the hoped-for results: in actual fact, it succeeded in totally ruining the former prestige of the venue. (From this moment on it mattered whether an artist was categorised as either a “Grand” or a “Chamber Hall” musician.)

Existing parts of the building had to be demolished in a few places in order to reinforce the structures and to allow the concealed installation of new electrical and mechanical componentry. Lakatos notes that these parts were primarily brick walls and sections of the floor structure.

The new structures were made by preserving the original listed claddings and interior design solutions. In order to maximize utility, the reinforced concrete structures of the wings on Király Street and Dohnányi Street, which were affected by the roof space development carried out in the 1970s, had to be demolished.

“In order to extend the spaces open to the public, we rethought the two courtyards. We have established a space for teaching during the day, and a buffet area serving the Grand Hall during the evening, on the ground floor of the multi-storey inner courtyard on the Király Street side,” the chief engineer said. A new lift connected to the courtyard on the Dohnányi Street side also improves access for the general public. Heavy duty glass panels have been installed in the floors of both courtyards; these channel natural light into the orchestra changing room on the lower floor on the Király Street side and the library on the Dohnányi Street side.

Climate control of the concert halls also proved to be a serious challenge.

Lakatos said about the former solution that was in place for many years: “Ventilation of the Grand Hall of the Liszt Academy was achieved by a natural draught in the inner courtyards and specially installed air ducts that were connected to the courtyards, as well as originally two large fans built in to the loft spaces of the side balconies, which – depending on the direction of rotation – either sucked or blew air. In winter, the current of air was warmed by loft space radiators. However, the fans were so noisy that mechanical ventilation could not be employed during performances 59

gergely lakatos © kata Schiller

Chief engineer Gergely Lakatos on the Chamber Hall: “We carried out a full historical monument reconstruction, with the demolition of non-original installations and the rearrangement of functions, on the basis of archive photos as well as existing plans and building documents that have survived only in part; and musicians and the general public can once again take over a chamber hall with an ambience and characteristics that are unique of their kind, combined with the very latest technical stage solutions hidden behind the scenes.”

and rehearsals, and thus the system was severely compromised.” Air flowed through circular openings hidden in the laurel wreath-decorated ceiling. Heating chambers operating on a similar principle were located in the cellar; air flowed from the courtyards via the heating chambers and through pipes set in the walls, to be diverted by air spoilers formed from stuccoes beneath the galleries, from where it filtered into the hall itself through shaped ornamental grills.

“It was only after the cessation of regular concerts that one could experience for oneself the fact that the heating system of the Grand Hall was incapable of warming the approximately 7500 cubic metres of air space by itself. Complaints about deficiencies in the heating unearthed in the archives even in the years after the opening became immediately understandable. We were astonished to discover that the only way to resolve this situation was increasingly frequent public concerts, since the audience filling the hall actually significantly contributes to the warming effect,” the chief engineer remarked. In the original setup there was also a cooling effect during the summer because the air deep in the shaded courtyards was always cooler. However, this effect was considerably reduced by the presence of an audience, as proved by the increasingly urgent calls for a stable temperate environment for the organ, as research studies of the archives reveal.

In the end, historic European stages served as a precedent for the climate control of the concert hall. As in other distinguished locations, the original solution in Budapest proved the best and the most realistic to implement: fresh air arrives in the hall through the ceiling and is vented at near floor level – not in the reversed manner applied in today’s cinemas and concert halls, which induces an unpleasant chilled sensation and raises a cloud of dust.

The walls, repainted in the last century, presumably for ideological reasons, have regained their original ornamentation thanks to in-depth research work on the part of restorers. The Grand Hall, in all its glorious pomp, has become a sanctuary of Apollo, while the till-now-concealed rich Art Nouveau decoration of the Chamber Hall steps forth as a cheerful yet worthy companion. Remaining faithful to solutions that were originally applied, the painters and restorers have used genuine gold leaf in the restored outer areas, while in the interiors the appearance of gilding has been achieved through a so-called high copper content beaten metal process. The tapestries and drapery are fashioned to recall the opulence of 1907. The result of the reconstruction in its external and intrinsic overall impact is such as to make the institution a candidate for any of the most prestigious international heritage protection awards – and all to the greatest satisfaction of music lovers.

Tamás Vajna

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Inauguration of the new educational and administrative centre at Wesselényi street 52.

522 Reconstruction and Modernization of the Main Building on Liszt square Development of programmes for secondary music schools and music teacher training Instrument Procurement men

Development of Educational and Performing Art Programmes ■ Talent Management ■ Fostering Ensemble Culture ■ Development of Alma Mater Concerts ■ Development of Educational Programmes in English ■ Equal opportunities at Liszt Academy Nati National N tionall Development Develop l mentt A Agency gency www.ujszechenyiterv.gov.hu 06 40 638 638

The project is supported by the European Union and co-financed by the European Cohesion Fund.

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Photos of the reconstruction (2010—2013) © Kata Schiller 63

the Chamber Hall to Become Grand Again

the Chamber Hall (1907) © Liszt Academy Archives 64

Since the opening of the Liszt Academy in 1907 on Liszt Ferenc Square (former Gyár Street), the Chamber Hall has often had to content itself with the degrading role of the Grand Hall’s “little sister”. During its long history, it has been labelled “Small Hall”, “Chamber Hall”, and even “Theatre Hall” when it accommodated theatrical plays combined with music; officially, however, it was designated “the small music hall of the institution”, even if the first and second-year students of the “opera singing department” performed their “opera nights”, with attendant scenery, on its stage. These events notwithstanding, it was not typically referred to as the hall of small opera, or chamber opera.

Irrespective of its various designations and roles, the Chamber Hall had essentially remained the derided “little sister” of the Grand Hall until recent times. What was the reason for this unequivocally restrained enthusiasm?

Some think it came from musicians’ disagreeable past experiences, many of whom still associate the Chamber Hall with the stressful exams of their student years. But probably there was more to it than that: the performers complained about the bad acoustics, and the audience about the austerity of the milieu. However, it must be said these are not “innate” characteristics of the Chamber Hall. Both its diminished performance capacity and enjoyment value derive from two “surgical actions” – we might even say “mutilations” – that were performed on it in two phases: one intervention was aesthetic; the other, more serious one, functional.

Contemporary photographs taken at the time of the inauguration of the Liszt Academy reveal to us that a fundamental element of the Chamber Hall’s architectonic unity was the two large and impressive chandeliers in the middle, which were removed (due to maintenance difficulties) in its first years of operation. This was all the more regrettable given that the two ingenious architects of the building, Flóris Korb and Kálmán Giergl, had obviously intended the chandeliers to be the main aesthetic emphasis of the Chamber Hall – much more so than in the case of the lavishly decorated Grand Hall. With the reconstruction of the two chandeliers, the architectural balance of the Chamber Hall, which has been disrupted for more than a century, will also be restored. Therefore, while the interior may indeed be described as “moderate”, it is not at all “humble”; and the ambiance, besides being “pleasant and harmonious”, is at the same time very elegant.

The second, functional intervention happened around 50 years later.

In the archives of the Liszt Academy, there is a “staging techniques budget” dating from 27 November 1963, which was compiled by Pál Tolnay (1891-1985), the most outstanding stage technology engineer of the time. It said that – much to Tolnay’s despair – the then management of the Academy, with approval from the authorities, had ordered the demolition of the Chamber Hall’s “entire mechanical apparatus” – that is, its high-standard stage technology, which had been functioning impeccably for the past 60 years

Sir Georg Solti (1987) © Gábor Fejér

the Chamber Hall to Become Gr and Again

– because it was considered “too expensive for the small scale of the hall”.

To be sure, the early Kádár era did not show too much affinity for the architectural or technical achievements of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy: before long, the Socialist leadership of Budapest decreed the blowing up of the National Theatre, only a few blocks from the Academy. However, the truth of the matter is that the Liszt Academy had struggled with a chronic shortage of space for decades; now, with the elimination of the orchestral pit and the trap cellar, they could expand the area of the library; and by dividing the 17-meter-high (!) fly loft with slabs, two extra classrooms could be built.

Nevertheless, the expectations of the institution’s management that the removal of the flies would result in “the improvement of the acoustics in the hall” proved to be mere illusion. In the course of the alteration, a Post Social Realist/Modernist “concert shell” (or, as the supervising acoustic expert put it, a “sound baffle room”) was built into the stage area, which, besides being completely inharmonious with the Art Nouveau architecture of the hall, further damaged its acoustics. Thanks to its original proportions, the Chamber Hall has very good acoustic potential; with the current reconstruction, which far surpasses even its original capacity, the hall will not only regain its suitability for chamber operas but also become a multifaceted and popular concert venue.

There is no record of the Chamber Hall as an independent chamber opera venue in its first decades of operation, nor in the interwar period; apparently, it could only fulfil this function during the few democratic years between the end of World War II and the 1948 “year of change” that led to a complete Communist takeover in Hungary. You might well ask why, in its more than 100-year history, the Chamber Hall has been so rarely used for chamber operas, hosting instead “only” the exam performances of the university’s various faculties. The answer is not far to seek: the first half of the 20th century was the heyday of Post Romanticism, which held a special fascination for the grandiose symphonic apparatus. By the time the Hungarian music scene started to embrace the now classic modern composers and their works written for chamber ensembles, the Chamber Hall had already lost its attraction and scenic potential.

In the last few decades the international opera repertoire has gone through enormous changes. The growing supply of Baroque and contemporary compositions have opened new opportunities for the students of the Vocal and Opera Department, as well as for other faculties at the Liszt Academy. The reopening of the Chamber Hall as a chamber opera venue will greatly enhance the music life of not only the Liszt Academy but of Budapest in general. In its first more than 100 years, the Chamber Hall has accommodated a plethora of musical, dramatic, literary and modern dance productions, providing significant material for the historians of these different arts to research. But for all its rich past, the Chamber Hall’s truly grand time is now to begin!

Máté Mesterházi

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Finomra Finomra hangolva

hangolva

A Heti Válasz hétrôl hétre információt, mûveltséget és érveket ad olvasóinak.

Fizessen elő lapunkra, és legyen tagja a Heti Válasz hűségklubjának!

Akcióinkról és hűségprogramunkról a www.hetivalasz.hu/elofizetes honlapon olvashat.

Friday 6 December 2013 / 19.00

Chamber Hall Mozart: The Magic Flute Artistic director: Éva Marton Director: András Almási-Tóth Translation: Dániel Varró Set: Árpád Iványi Costume: Bori Tóth Choreography: Tamás Juronics Choir master: Csaba Somos Sarastro – Krisztián Cser Tamino – Szabolcs Brickner Queen of the Night – Rita Rácz Pamina – Júlia Hajnóczy Papageno – Csaba Gaál Papagena – Ildikó Jakab Speaker/2nd priest – Máté Szécsi 1st lady – Orsolya Ambrus 2nd lady – Tímea Tímár 3rd lady – Szilvia Vörös Monostatos/1st priest – Béla T. Gippert Flute – Kerner Mária Artemisia Chamber Orchestra Alpaslan Ertüngealp (conductor) It has taken fifty years for the acoustically refined Chamber Hall to regain, as part of the reconstruction of the building on Liszt Ferenc Square, its original form and operatic function. Now the public have the opportunity to gauge the success of this endeavour through a brand-new production by the Liszt Academy. It comes as no surprise to find that The Magic Flute by Mozart is the work chosen to inaugurate the 21st century history of opera performances in the Chamber Hall, since this is perhaps the ultimate masterpiece of opera.

The production is built on the talents of rising stars of Hungarian opera, as well as recent graduates of the Singing Department. Artistic director Éva Marton and professor of stage performance András Almási-Tóth, who has invited young people to attend the performance, have actually positioned the Liszt Academy – or to be more precise the Art Nouveau building – at the centre of the performance and made it the backdrop to the whole production.

In the performance, the Liszt Academy itself becomes the symbol of music; after all, what other than music would be capable of bringing into harmony the eternal opposites of darkness and light, intellect and emotion, heightened concept and natural instinct, Sarastro and the Queen of the Night?

Tickets: HUF 4 900, 3 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

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Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch: Pilgrimage to the Fount of Art © József Hajdú

Turandot Teaches – Éva Marton at the Liszt Academy Zoltán Kodály said once that comets are not for public lighting, and he was undoubtedly right; however, as an exception to the rule, we are fortunate to know a comet that has been shining for almost the last ten years in the Academy’s Vocal and Opera Studies Department. It is Éva Marton, who returned to her hometown after an unparalleled performing arts career, which took her to the brightest stars of the world’s opera houses, while her spacecraft flew between them fuelled by her incredible energy.

If only in the mid-1960s, when Éva Marton attended the Liszt Academy as a student, a professor like herself had been in the teaching staff! But there was not, although the widely respected professor Dr. Jenő Sipos certainly handed down to her all he could as a voice teacher in the traditional sense of the word. In any case, the young Éva Heinrich – called by her maiden name before she adopted that of her husband Dr. Zoltán Marton – soon became an image-creating factor for the school. Each time a delegation of foreign professors – at that time mostly from the Soviet Union – visited the institution, she would come along with Tosca’s prayer Vissi d’arte, as if to prove that her education was in good hands, and the Academy well deserved its reputation. With this aria, she already gave a glimpse of the great Tosca that she was to become in later years, when she enchanted the opera audiences of four continents singing by the side of such eminent artists as Aragall, Domingo, Giacomini, Pavarotti, Milnes, Taddei, Wixell and others.

For more than 30 years, she played in the front row in the opera champions’ league, her vast repertoire including most of the oeuvre of Puccini, Wagner, Richard Strauss and Verdi. Being a natural born stage performer, she gave her most brilliant self in those roles which involve the heroine’s dramatic development. Turandot is one fine example, which won her the critical acclaim of being the greatest performer of the title role of Puccini’s last opera over the last 40 years. In the same way, she became closely identified with Wagner’s Brünnhilde in Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung, as well as with the Empress of Richard Strauss’ Die Frau ohne Schatten.

She literally had the audiences at her feet at the New York Metropolitan Opera, the Vienna State Opera, the Scala of Milan, the Liceu of Barcelona, the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, London’s Covent Garden, and only the annals – and the recollection of Zoltán Marton – keep count of all the opera houses around the globe where she performed to sweeping success.

Anything she ever did she did in full swing, and she has always remained true to herself. She is impassioned and composed at the same time; a prima donna and a team player; ruler and servant, Turandot and Kundry. She quoted the words of the latter with a hint of irony (”Dienen, dienen” – “To serve, to serve”) when she put on the “penance robe” to fulfil her 69

Éva marton © László Emmer

The first opera to be performed in the reborn Chamber Hall is being prepared for stage with the artistic direction of Éva Marton. The location-specific version of Mozart’s Magic Flute is directed by András Almási-Tóth, and the conductor is Turkish-born Ertüngealp Alpaslan, who graduated from the Academy. In the same vein, Prof. Marton has requested that former graduate students of the Vocal and Opera Studies Department sing the main roles. The choice of the piece was inspired by the inherent relationship between the mysterious ornamentation of the reincarnated building and the masonic references of Mozart’s musical drama. Therefore, the real protagonist of the production is the Liszt Academy itself: the spaces and architecture of the building reappear on the stage, as well as the Art Nouveau motifs and Art Deco decorative elements, which are also represented on the costumes. The first performance is scheduled for 6 December and will be followed by five more in 2013.

A real novelty awaiting the opera lovers of Budapest is the orchestral pit and the flies, now back in use again (recreated according to the original plans after 50 years of unwelcome intermission), while the most sharp-eared members of the audience can look forward to the debut of the libretto translated by Dániel Varró for this special occasion.

new role as public servant and head of department at the Liszt Academy.

And shortly, the pampered darling of international audiences and high society, the celebrated artist who was carried around in private jets and limousines, found herself at the registrar’s department coordinating the preparations for the mid-term opera exams.

With her appointment to the head of the Vocal and Opera Studies Department, the post gained a whole new meaning and became that of an artistic director. She was a pioneer in the sense that she did not merely head but also managed her department by establishing a coherent programme and ideals to be followed. Thanks to her hard work, the students were now armed with more theatrical and singing skills, and took the stage with higher self-confidence – not only her students but all others, as Professor Marton took care of everyone who frequented her department.

Her activity as department head opened a new chapter in the history of the Liszt Academy. She reformed the entire repertoire: suddenly, a number of lesser-known arias that were worthy of attention appeared in the examinations; the students made cheerful experiments with operetta, and even musical works; they organized song recitals from the works of contemporary composers; and the young composers were inspired by the vitality and openness of Prof. Marton and her students to compose new operas for their fellow musicians. As a result, in the last two years the final opera exam (which is now held in its proper place in the Hungarian State Opera House) have included two premieres: one shockingly tragic (The Awakening of Spring by Máté Bella), and another bittersweet one-act opera written on a typically local theme (Violet by Árpád Solti).

This is the kind of ambiance that we would like to preserve in the spirit of Professor Marton – and with her – in the soon-to-be-reopened Chamber Hall, the smaller venue of the Liszt Academy, which will host opera and chamber opera performances, ensemble concerts and musical plays. The productions will be made for audiences above and under 18, in an innovative vein, so that it will be chic to come here, be part of the thrilling experiments, and enjoy the atmosphere of the hall, and the closeness and intimacy of the stage. We do not intend to erect a statue for Éva Marton (yet!), since we keep counting on her as professor emerita and on her invaluable contribution to the department – which from this academic year will be headed by Andrea Meláth. We hope that what Prof.

Marton began as a department head and teacher, she will continue and enhance as the artistic director of the Chamber Hall’s opera programme.

If you have someone like Éva Marton, you also have standards – very high standards. And we do need high-standard productions because “in these sacred halls”, as Sarastro will sing in Mozart’s Magic Flute at the opening performance of the Chamber Hall, it is not only “revenge” that we do not want to know, but also mediocrity. We invite and expect everybody to rise to those summits from which Éva Marton has come to us.

András Batta

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péter Frank & carlo zecchi (1958) © edit molnár / MTI

Levente Szörényi (1968) © Demeter Balla / Hungarian National Museum

King’s Singers (1980) © Zoltán Pólya / MTI 72

Liszt Ferenc square facade of the Liszt Academy (1950) © Kiscell Museum

Choir of the Wiener Staatsoper, directed by Klaus Clemens (1955) © Hungarian National Museum

Jenő Jandó & János Ferencsik (1983) © Gábor Fejér 73

Friday 6 December 2013 / 19.00

Saturday 7 December 2013 / 19.30

Grand Hall

Grand Hall

Kristóf baráti & MÁV Symphony Orchestra Brahms: Academic Festival Overture, Op. 80 Brahms: Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77 Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73 Kristóf Baráti (violin) MÁV Symphony Orchestra Péter Csaba (conductor) Music by Johannes Brahms is made relevant and exciting even today by the alloying of respect for tradition and innovation. Playful more than dignified, the Academic Festival Overture was in fact written as a musical thank you for the honorary doctorate the University of Breslau bestowed on Brahms. The Violin Concerto in D major, which was disparaged by critics of the day yet since then is considered an essential part of the Brahms oeuvre, was composed for the electrifying violin playing of Joseph Joachim, as a consequence of which the piece is packed full of tension, which Kristóf Baráti – who has not yet reached his mid-30s yet is internationally acclaimed and a winner of the Paganini Competition – is able to capture with his refined musical intelligence. Finally, the popular Symphony No. 2 speaks of undisguised joy of life and exuberant happiness, belying somewhat the commonly held view of Brahms as consistently gloomy and distant.

Tickets: HUF 4 000, 3 500, 3 000 Organizer: MÁV Symphony Orchestra 74

Isabelle faust & Concerto Budapest Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61 György Kurtág: New Messages, Op. 34a Shostakovich: Symphony No. 12 in D minor, Op. 112 (“The Year of 1917”) Isabelle Faust (violin) Concerto Budapest András Keller (conductor) “Her sound has passion, grit and electricity, but also a disarming warmth and sweetness that can unveil the music’s hidden strains of lyricism.” So wrote the music critic of The New York Times about a production by Isabelle Faust, and Budapest audiences have been allowed to confirm the veracity of this statement on several occasions.

This time the German violinist plays Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D major in the Grand Hall of the Liszt Academy.

In fact, this is the very same work that she recently recorded under the baton of none other than the great Claudio Abbado. Her partners for this recital are András Keller and the artists of Concerto Budapest, resident orchestra of the Liszt Academy, who will perform one of the most personal compositions of György Kurtág and the Twelfth Symphony of Shostakovich, written in 1961 and officially dedicated to the memory of Lenin.

Tickets: HUF 6 400, 4 700, 3 200 Organizer: Concerto Budapest

Isabelle faust

Born Leader with No Trait of a Dictator

András keller © Bálint Hrotkó

Concerto Budapest is ranked among the most prestigious and esteemed orchestras in Hungary by virtue of its unique ability to interpret the works of Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Grieg, Dvořák, Liszt, Sibelius and Shostakovich in its own authentic voice. Concerto is not a specialist in the traditional sense of the word, since this terminus tecnicus suggests a certain artistic limitation; instead, it has an independent and unequivocally recognizable style. Its musicians are able to create a real democracy of the instruments, not competing but conversing, arguing and playing with each other.

In their hands, the instruments shed their identities and start to interact in new and exciting ways.

Concerto Budapest is not exclusively connected with the name of András Keller; nonetheless, the two are now interdependent. Both names bear an emblematic significance. The ensemble, one of the oldest symphonic orchestras of Hungary, has undergone several metamorphoses in its 106 years of history. Founded in 1907 as Postal Orchestra, it was functioning in the 1990s under the name of the Hungarian Symphony Orchestra and later the Hungarian Telekom Symphony Orchestra, and finally reached maturity on its 100th anniversary in 2007.

It was in 2007 that the highly acclaimed violinist András Keller was appointed to the post of artistic director and conductor of the orchestra. The charismatic leader, with the perseverance and tranquillity of a captain, managed to steer around the reefs of financial difficulties, and finally got his shattered crew into safe harbour. In 2009, the orchestra changed its name again (and hopefully for good) to Concerto Budapest, which also marked a new start in the life of the ensemble. From autumn 2013, Concerto Budapest will function as the orchestra in residence of the Liszt Academy, and as such, it will play a major role in both education and the concert scene.

As Concerto Budapest eventually found its way home, so did András Keller. He has had an amazingly rich and multifaceted career so far, and perhaps the best part is only now to come. Founder of the world-famous Keller String Quartet, he began his studies at the Liszt Academy under the auspices of such outstanding teachers as Dénes Kovács, Ferenc Rados, and György Kurtág, who dedicated many of his compositions to him.

Keller has always considered as one of his crucial tasks the mustering of an understanding audience for contemporary music, both national and foreign. Driven by a strong personal motivation, he has done a lot to support and to promote the musical compositions of today. As he says, when compiling a concert programme – which he will have the opportunity to regularly do at the Liszt Academy – he treats the programme itself as a work of art. Of primary importance, he tries to avoid the random juxtaposition of pieces of music, but rather combine works which, in a given time and space, resonate and interpret each other.

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Born Leader with No Tr ait of a Dictator

András Keller is a born leader who, without even the slightest hint of despotism, is able to influence his fellow artists solely by the convincing quality of his art. A highly talented soloist, he has also been leader of the Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra and, following that, of the Budapest Festival Orchestra. He has given a number of memorable performances with his teacher Sándor Végh, who he regarded as his master. Like his elder colleague, Keller was also a violinist before he became a conductor, and he greatly benefits from his experience and knowledge as an instrumentalist when on the rostrum.

As simple as it might sound, the secret of Keller’s method is to encourage the musicians under his charge to pay attention to one another. The conductor selects certain elements from the piece so that the various instrumentalists can hear what the others are playing. It is trivial, but such trivialities can add up to produce high-quality cooperation, as this way the musicians are able to understand the composition and appreciate each other’s play much better. The more intensely they communicate, the more authentically they can render the piece of music. In practice, during the rehearsals most members of the orchestra often just sit silent and listen to the five or six selected musicians play. By the time the ensemble takes the stage, the musicians not only know when to enter, but they have an overall idea of the entire composition.

This comprehension is then transformed into a complex sounding experience.

For a long time, the string quartet that bears Keller’s name travelled the globe with the clear mission to take Hungarian classical and contemporary music to the great concert halls of the world. As a conductor, however, Keller has a reverse ambition: he wants to bring the world’s greatest musicians to Hungary. At his invitation, a number of distinguished foreign artists have agreed to perform in our country.

Under the direction of András Keller, the compositions disclose new and unknown faces, which become apparent only in his interpretation.

He remains a chamber musician even when he is conducting. Holding the baton as a violin bow in his hand, he is able to reconstruct with exceptional richness of detail even those pieces that we have heard a hundred times before. He does not believe in routine work, only in subtle elaboration.

As he is leading the orchestra, it feels as if he never for a moment has forgotten about the debuting conductor’s electric excitement, while each of his “strikes” makes a direct hit: for the musicians, it is precise instruction; for the audience, a reverberating impact.

József Kling

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Sunday 8 December 2013 / 16.00

Saturday 8 December 2013 / 19.30

Monday 9 December 2013 / 19.30

Chamber Hall

Grand Hall

Grand Hall

Danubia Orchestra Óbuda László Sándor: Szerelmi álom (“Dream of Love”) (world premiere) Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 Tünde Szabóki (soprano), Viktória Mester (alto), Szabolcs Brickner (tenor), András Palerdi (bass) Danubia Orchestra Óbuda; Kodály Choir Debrecen (Zoltán Pad – choir master) Domonkos Héja (conductor)

Mozart: The Magic Flute

Flute – Mária Kerner Artemisia Chamber Orchestra Alpaslan Ertüngealp (conductor)

Isabelle Faust (violin) Concerto Budapest András Keller (conductor)

Details on page 68.

Details on page 74.

Domonkos Héja founded the Danubia Orchestra Óbuda two decades ago.

The still youthful conductor was driven by three aims: to gather around himself a group of talented contemporaries in order to experience the joys of performing music together; to feature rarely played works on the concert programme; and to stimulate interest in classical music among younger audiences. The mission has proved successful, and today the ensemble are an established part of concert life in Hungary, while their highly talented conductor is currently also acting music director of the Hungarian State Opera. A special programme has been compiled for the 20th anniversary of the orchestra.

Alongside Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, the evening is made all the more special by the inclusion of a true curiosity: the world premiere of the symphonic composition Dream of Love by violinistcomposer László Sándor, one of the founding members of the orchestra.

Tickets: HUF 4 900, 3 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Tickets: HUF 6 400, 4 700, 3 200 Organizer: Concerto Budapest

Tickets: HUF 3 100, 2 400, 1 700, 1 000 Organizer: Óbudai Danubia Nonprofit Ltd.

Artistic director: Éva Marton Director: András Almási-Tóth Translation: Dániel Varró Set: Árpád Iványi Costume: Bori Tóth Choir master: Csaba Somos Choreography: Tamás Juronics Sarastro – Máté Szécsi Tamino – Szabolcs Brickner Queen of the Night– Rita Rácz Pamina – Júlia Hajnóczy Papageno – Csaba Gaál Papagena – Ildikó Jakab Speaker/2nd priest – Dávid Dani 1st lady – Orsolya Ambrus 2nd lady – Tímea Tímár 3rd lady – Szilvia Vörös Monostatos/1st priest – Béla T. Gippert

isabelle faust & Concerto Budapest Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61 György Kurtág: New Messages, Op. 34a Shostakovich: Symphony No. 12 in D minor, Op. 112 (“The Year of 1917”)

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Tuesday 10 December 2013 / 19.00

Wednesday 11 December 2013 / 19.00

Chamber Hall

Chamber Hall

Advent Concert with the New Liszt Ferenc Chamber Choir Arvo Pärt: The Deer’s Cry (Hungarian premiere) G. Gabrieli: Jubilate Deo Britten: Hymn to the Virgin Einojuhani Rautavaara: Magnificat G. Gabrieli: O Jesu, mi dulcissime Javier Busto: Four Motets for Christmas Time (Hungarian premiere) New Liszt Ferenc Chamber Choir Péter Erdei (conductor)

péter erdei © kata schiller

Péter Erdei’s name precedes him in the world of classical music. He directed the Hungarian Radio Choir for many years, is an honorary professor of the Liszt Academy and holds the title “Meritorious Artist”. His unwavering dedication to chamber music is clearly evidenced by a project he set up in 2010 when he recruited recent graduates and final year students to found the New Liszt Ferenc Chamber Choir, reviving a tradition that had fallen into disuse for three decades. The ensemble comprises singers of outstanding qualities who enjoy seeking out challenges that test them to the limits of their abilities; the choir specializes in the performance of lesser-known contemporary works demanding in-depth vocal skills. An excellent example of this is the Advent Concert featuring pieces from around 400 years of choral traditions, running from the late Renaissance right up to the present day.

Tickets: HUF 2 500, 1 600 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

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Mozart: The Magic Flute Artistic director: Éva Marton Director: András Almási-Tóth Translation: Dániel Varró Set: Árpád Iványi Costume: Bori Tóth Choir master: Csaba Somos Choreography: Tamás Juronics Sarastro – Krisztián Cser Tamino– Szabolcs Brickner Queen of the Night – Rita Rácz Pamina – Júlia Hajnóczy Papageno – Csaba Gaál Papagena – Ildikó Jakab Speaker/2nd priest –Máté Szécsi 1st lady – Orsolya Ambrus 2nd lady– Tímea Tímár 3rd lady – Alexandra Ruszó Monostatos/1st pirest – Béla T. Gippert Flute – Kerner Mária Artemisia Chamber Orchestra Alpaslan Ertüngealp (conductor) Details on page 68.

Tickets: HUF 4 900, 3 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Part of the Liszt Academy’s facade (1908) © Schroll Anton / Kiscell Museum

Wednesday 11 December 2013 / 19.30

Friday 13 December 2013 / 19.30

Grand Hall

Grand Hall

Black and White Colours Gergely Bogányi at the Liszt Academy I.

Beyond Music…

Tamás Vásáry’s Musical Conversations IV/2

D. Scarlatti: Six Sonatas Stravinsky: Petrushka Tchaikovsky: The Seasons, Op. 37b (excerpts) Rachmaninov: Preludes Rachmaninov: Etudes Balakirev: Islamey – Oriental Fantasy, Op. 18

Works of Claude Debussy Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Hungarian Radio Choir (choir master: Gábor Oláh) Tamás Vásáry (lecturer, conductor & featuring on piano) The second of Tamás Vásáry’s musical conversations turns the spotlight on the life and works of Claude Debussy.

This is done not solely, not even primarily, in the popular style of teaching, since these lectures by Vásáry do not so much “teach” as “educate” the audience: they rise above musical clichés to present a perspective that looks behind and, at the same time, beyond the music.

“Whenever I play, I have to find what it is that is truly my inspiration. It might be a sunset, a person, a poem. It is essential to discover what and who we are, and this is not easy,” says Tamás Vásáry, and we can be assured about the attraction of the sincere artistic creed of this musician, who spends his life researching and sharing his discoveries. “The most that we can give to music is our truest emotions and sincerity.”

Tickets: HUF 3500, 2800, 2000, 1500 Organizer: Hungarian Radio Music Ensembles 80

Rachmaninoff At Ivanovka (mid 1890s) © Wikipedia

Teachers of Gergely Bogányi and his wider circle were confident in asserting – even in the early years of his time at the Liszt Academy – that he would one day be an international pianist. Today, there can be no doubt that this assertion about an artist who would go on to win a Kossuth Prize at the age of 30 (in 2004) was justified. Alongside his series of great achievements, we can include the memory of the pure bravura and magic Bogányi displayed in the two-day Chopin marathon that he “ran” in 2010. Works

by Russian composers take the lion’s share of the official programme for this concert, arranged at the Liszt Academy for a few weeks before his 40th birthday.

The performance is sure to be hallmarked by virtuosity, deep introspection, spellbinding playfulness, and who knows what else. After all, Gergely Bogányi, who is consistently generous in his encores, will in all probability once again yield to the audience’s demands and to his own performance mood.

Tickets: HUF 6 500, 5 400, 3 800 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

bartók, kodály és a walbauer-kerpely vonósnégyes (fotó: székely Gergely aladár Bogányi 1910, forrás: MTA Zenetudományi Intézet Bartók Archivum © István fotótára) Balázs

Music Made Visible

© józsef hajdú 82

No deep knowledge of art history and interior decoration is needed to recognise that the concert halls of the 19th century and the turn-ofthe-century Art Nouveau period were erected as shrines to the Greek god Apollo, while the theatres were offered as sanctuaries dedicated to Dionysus. In most buildings of the time the Antique deities were only alluded to by a few popular motifs: the designers were apparently content to depict a triumphal march of Dionysus, the juxtaposition of Apollo’s lyres and swans, the march of the muses, or a laurel ornament. However, the Liszt Academy of Budapest, built between 1903 and 1907, reveals a much more complex architecture. Here, the rich and manifold decorations of the façades and the main halls, dominated by the motifs and symbols of Greek mythology, form a unified whole and – reaching beyond the Nietzschian opposition – are integrated into an elaborate iconographic programme.

The highlight of this iconographic programme is undoubtedly the Grand Hall.

Given the organic unity of its iconographic system, the entire edifice is interwoven by a sub- and superordinating hierarchical structure based on architectural and decorative oppositions. As the horizontal side elements of the main façade are contrasted with a vertically divided avant-corps towering in the middle, so the three-storey-high Grand Hall emerges from the lower built lobby space. Similarly, the two sides of the façade are decorated with water-associated motifs, which is repeated in the foyer by the bluecoloured majolica plates, the globes with their sparkling water and bubble patterns, and the wave ornamentation of the cornice upstairs. The world that rises above the waters like an island belongs to Apollo: this is represented on the front façade by the Doric columns fashioned after the composition of the triumphal arches. In the Grand Hall, however, the effect of the constructed elements is only secondary. Here, the successive arches have the role of holding the symbolic vegetation which dominates the room: the laurel tree fills in and pervades the entire space from floor to ceiling, forming groves to shade the interior and casting dots of shadows onto the side walls. The laurel strikes its black roots on the ground floor, only to run its green trunks up the sidewalls, and finally cover the vault with its golden foliage. The Doric façade, featuring swans and lyres, represents the Temple of Apollo, and the deity is also endowed with the attributes of the Egyptian sun god (sun discs, obelisks, pyramidia, egyptianizing heads, pylons). The laurel grove is Apollo’s holy sanctuary on the island – also reminiscent of his shrine on the island of Delos –, with swans, lyres, serpent-decorated altars and the double portrait of the deity himself. In Apollo’s symbolic grove the most eminent place is occupied by the organ and the other musical allusions, among them the depictions of the swan song.

For all their contrasting values, the Apollonian and Dionysian worlds at times overlap, and this is represented in the architecture of the building by several inter-referring motifs, reflections and infiltrations: in the waterworld of the lobby we can at the same time discover lyres, snakes, and pyramidia; the sun discs are reflected on the wet surfaces to produce multiple images; and in the parts belonging to Apollo, the Dionysian

Grand Hall, longitudinal section (excerpt) © Hungarian Museum of Architecture

Grand Hall after the 1962 restoration © Dezső Sziklai / MTI

Annie Fischer (1984) © Gábor Fejér 83

Music Made Visible

scherzo also appears, as well as the moon’s silver glint by the side of the sun’s golden blaze. The passage between the different worlds is made possible by the mediators, who take their stand at the boundaries of the two realms. Such mediating figures are the muses guarding the ground floor entrances of the Grand Hall, and the founder Ferenc Liszt himself, who is sitting enthroned like a high priest between the lower and upper part of the central avant-corps of the façade, as if to affirm the Christian layer of meaning which is also embodied in the building’s iconographic system. It is again mediators who play the main role in the fresco

by Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch on the back wall of the upstairs foyer: female figures dancing on top of the fountain of art as personifications of the various arts. At the same height in the Grand Hall there are Apollonian herma pillar priestesses, standing on the side as caryatids and in the middle as light bearers. Also on this level we have the only mediator that can actually be sounded: the organ.

The two different worlds intermingle in the fresco as well, which makes the painting a crucial part of the iconographic programme: it allows for a certain transparency between the foyer and the Grand Hall so that the work of art becomes an integral part of both spaces. Celestial beings playing Dionysian instruments glorify the arts, the fountain of which is visited by pilgrims. Higher, sitting on the clouds there are angels who play the characteristic instruments of Apollo, and their music already sounds in another world hidden behind the purple drapes – a reference to the purple robe attributed to Artemis, the twin sister of Apollo.

The Grand Hall is a sacred place for ceremonies, and the ceremonies are the concerts themselves. The roles of priestesses are taken by the musicians, among whom the soloists can be regarded as the embodiments of Orpheus, that is, if we are to believe the motifs on their dressing room windows. Participation in the ritual acts are sanctioned by inscriptions – Favete lingvis and Sursum corda –, while Apollo’s altars decorated with serpents affirm the sacred nature of the concerts. As we listen to the music, our souls, like the geniuses holding on to their lyres on the façade, rise into Apollonian heights where we can see the god’s portraits, altars and descending angels, as well as the words Harmony, Beauty, Rhythm, Poetry, Melody and Imagination reflected in the celestial water beyond the vaulted sky – and actually written in the skylights. Meanwhile, the audience, tenderly hugged by Apollo, is turned into a laurel tree like Daphne.

In the Grand Hall, music itself is made visible – and music, as Nietzsche said, is the direct idea of the eternal life.

© józsef hajdú

Dr. Endre Raffay

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www.mtva.hu

Saturday 14 December 2013 / 16.00

Saturday 14 December 2013 / 19.30

Chamber Hall

Grand Hall

30 Years Solo Concert

by Ferenc Snétberger Mozart: The Magic Flute

Details on page 68.

The career of Ferenc Snétberger reaches its 30th year this year, an anniversary that could be celebrated in no better way than by allowing the audience of the Grand Hall to meet once again the master by himself, on stage, with a guitar. The fact is this instrument always speaks eloquently when in the hands of this great artist, unfolding a story about the youngest son who started out from a small town in north Hungary, and whose remarkable talent meant that he could have played guitar just like Al Di Meola or George Benson because all the necessary expertise was already there, in his fingers. Instead, he chose the difficult path: he sought out his own style in which elements of his earlier classical music training, Roma tradition, flamenco and jazz are present at one and the same time. This approach lifted him out of the crowded international field, earning him a place on the stage alongside such greats as vocalist Bobby McFerrin and legendary bass guitarist Richard Bona.

Tickets: HUF 4 900, 3 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Tickets: HUF 6 500, 5 400, 3 800 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Artistic director: Éva Marton Director: András Almási-Tóth Translation: Dániel Varró Set: Árpád Iványi Costume: Bori Tóth Choreography: Tamás Juronics Choir master: Csaba Somos Sarastro – Krisztián Cser Tamino – Szabolcs Brickner Queen of the Night – Rita Rácz Pamina – Júlia Hajnóczy Papageno – Csaba Gaál Papagena – Eszter Zavaros Speaker/2nd priest – Máté Szécsi 1st lady – Orsolya Ambrus 2nd lady – Tímea Tímár 3rd lady – Alexandra Ruszó Monostatos/1st priest – Béla T. Gippert Flute – Kerner Mária Artemisia Chamber Orchestra Alpaslan Ertüngealp (conductor)

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ferenc Snétberger © tamás dobos

SUNDAY 15 DECEMBER 2013 / 10.00

Sunday 15 December 2013 / 18.00

Chamber Hall

Grand Hall Kodály 131 Choral Works of Zoltán Kodály

Wanderer’s Life 2.0 – in the footsteps of Verdi and Wagner Finals of the secondary school competition

Ildikó Jakab (soprano), Eszter Balogh (alto), István Horváth (tenor), István Kovács (bass) Pécs Chamber Choir, Cantate Mixed Choir, Bartók Béla Female Choir Szeged, Bárdos Lajos Girls Choir Debrecen, Bartók Béla Male Choir Symphony Orchestra of the Liszt Academy Aurél Tillai, Ferenc Sapszon, Péter Ordasi, Tamás Lakner, Péter Erdei (conductors)

Buoyed up by the huge success of the 2011 “Wanderer’s Life – in the footsteps of Ferenc Liszt” competition for secondary school students (nearly 600 students from more than 80 secondary schools took part in the challenge), Jeunesses Musicales Hungary and the Liszt Academy are this year organizing a contest entitled “Wanderer’s Life 2.0 – in the footsteps of Verdi and Wagner” in honour of the two geniuses born exactly 200 years ago this year. The offline final of the competition arranged via vandorelet.hu, featuring the six best quintets, takes place in the restored Chamber Hall.

The clash between the finalist teams is open to the public, and judging is conducted by an illustrious jury: Éva Marton, Kossuth Prize winner singer; András Batta, Rector of the Liszt Academy; Szilveszter Ókovács, Director of the Hungarian State Opera; Zoltán Farkas, Intendant of Bartók Radio.

There is no shadow of doubt that Zoltán Kodály was a Hungarian composer, musicologist and influential public figure of defining significance. He was awarded a degree in music composition from the Liszt Academy; in 1919 he took up the post of deputy director of the same institution, and he continued teaching folk music even after going into retirement. During the evening’s performance, which showcases some of the most outstanding, companies picked from a domestic choral scene that exhibits standards that are legendary in themselves, the audience is gifted with several of the nearly 150 a cappella choral works Kodály wrote.

One of the highlights of the programme is the masterfully structured Te Deum, in which Gregorian, Baroque and Renaissance stylistic motifs are mixed with characteristically Hungarian “recruitment” elements. The event pays tribute to the epoch-making master and honorary president of the Liszt Academy on the eve of the 131st anniversary of his birth.

Free tickets for the final can be requested from jegy@zeneakademia.hu or in person at the temporary ticket desk of the Liszt Academy Concert Centre.

Organizers: Jeunesses Musicales Hungary, Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Tickets: HUF 3 200, 2 100, 1 300 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre Organizing partner: Association of Hungarian Choirs, Orchestras and Folk Ensembles (KÓTA), Supported by the National Cultural Fund - Hungary

Zoltán Kodály (1947) © edit molnár / mti

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The Building

© József Hajdú 88

Teaching at the National Hungarian Royal Academy of Music, founded in 1875, started in the apartment of Ferenc Liszt on Hal Square, which was swept away in the course of urban redevelopment in downtown Pest at the turn of the century. The school had to wait until 1879 before it could take over its brand new building on Andrássy Avenue: today this is called the Old Liszt Academy. However, the Neo-Renaissance block designed

by Adolf Láng quickly proved too small; the Society of Hungarian Engineers and Architects, which each year took on a different challenge, selected for its 1888-1889 tender the topic “concert building connected with the music and drama academy”.

The competition was won by 27-year-old Kálmán Giergl, who 12 years later, in 1901, received precisely the same task from the minister of religion and education by direct commission, without tender, as joint senior partner in the office he shared with Flóris Korb. Notwithstanding the fact that both Korb and Giergl were by then experienced, respected architects, with a portfolio including the Királyi tenement on Ferenciek Square and the two Klotild Palaces, the obvious strings that had been pulled in this project raised a storm of professional criticism. In the letters to the editor section of the Journal of Entrepreneurs, the equally famous architect Marcell Komor, writing under a nom de plume, thundered: “...I protest with all my heart and soul, that design commissions of such a nature should be slipped to any Tom, Dick or Harry, and chums with other names, who insist on clinging to illustrious surnames!”

The first version, and then the second, 1913, version following the shelving of the Drama Academy, were drafted by Korb and Giergl very much under the influence of Lechner; the oriental elements of the facade, the richly articulated cornice, and the rows of arched windows all point to this. However, dispute about the draft plans immediately broke out in the architecture committee: Ignác Alpár, eternal antagonist enamoured with Historicism, speaking within the earshot of Lechner, who was also a member of the jury, damned the pair of designers, while the scheme was also vetoed by musician-architect Kamill Fittler, ministerial commissioner of works and, interestingly enough, director of the Museum of Applied Arts, one of Lechner’s projects.

Thus the music academy was finally constructed between 1904 and 1907 in a unique mixture of styles, on the basis of a third redrafting, with a greater respect for tradition and, for instance, primarily stonework on the façade instead of ceramics. The stone Atlases above the entrance would be equally at home on any of the Neo-Renaissance mansions lining nearby Andrássy Avenue, whereas the Genius sculptures by Géza Maróti positioned above the main cornice were appreciatively received by international visitors to the Milan International in 1906. At the same time, elements borrowed from Assyrian or Egyptian architecture associate the thinking of Korb and Giergl with the philosophy of Lechner, who travelled to the Middle East in search of inspiration. It was also an indication of their age that they chose to use reinforced concrete, a relatively little-known technique

© József Hajdú

The Building

in Hungary at the time. The engineer Szilárd Zielinski imported the system from France and with it created a cutting-edge structure for its day: he used reinforced concrete to make not only the foundations but the entire floor structure and the balconies of the Grand Hall.

Although there is some basis to the much-voiced assertion that the finest artisans of the period were employed on the Liszt Academy, the full truth is that when it came to their selection, price was the foremost consideration.

The ministry contracted the bidder offering the lowest price in virtually every public procurement connected with the construction. This policy was only deviated from when the architects suggested otherwise; thanks to them, the more expensive but presumably more reliable Zsolnay company of Pécs received the commission for the floor and wall cladding instead of József Walla; and instead of Károly Majoros, who was favoured by the ministry, in the end the windows in the building were created by Miksa Róth, whose name is still recognized to this day. It is worth adding, however, that the latter decision took a whole year to secure.

The decoration of the interiors, although derived from antique and Renaissance pre-images, basically reveals an Austrian Jugendstil influence. Róth worked on the basis of the pattern book of Julius Hoffmann from Vienna, and the ventilation grids in the Grand Hall are reminiscent of the cupola decorated with golden leaves of the Sezession exhibition palace (1897). The name of Aladár Körösfői Kriesch is worthy of particular mention among the many participating fellow artists. The two frescos in the vestibule on the ground floor and the composition that can be seen in the first floor foyer (The Fountain of Art, a slightly late PreRaphaelite masterpiece that is rare in Hungary) are the work of the leader of the Gödöllő artists’ colony.

Amongst the interiors, the ground floor and upper vestibule, the library with metal-framed gallery and the director’s conference room preserving its original items of furniture all managed to survive the stormy decades of the 20 th century in their original form. However, the overall picture of the Grand Hall and the Chamber Hall was considerably altered by renovation carried out after the Second World War. In the Grand Hall, in place of the green-yellow wall tones the emphasis is given to restored reddish brown marble (based on the discovery of original paint layers under the later coverings), and the wood panelling painted over in a brown gloss has been returned to its original black and gold. Thus the overall effect of the hall with its gilded ornamentation and old gold-bronze upholstery has become much sharper and more contrasted, just as in the Chamber Hall, where the colours have been renewed, while decorative paintings discovered on the ceiling have also been restored.

Dániel Kovács

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Tuesday 17 December 2013 / 19.00

Wednesday 18 December 2013 / 19.00

Chamber Hall

Chamber Hall

Song Recitals at the Liszt Academy Judith Németh & Izabella Simon “Brothers, Sisters and Lovers” Mozart: The Magic Flute Artistic director: Éva Marton Director: András Almási-Tóth Translation: Dániel Varró Set: Árpád Iványi Costume: Bori Tóth Choreography: Tamás Juronics Choir master: Csaba Somos

Songs of Clara and Robert Schumann, Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, Alma and Gustav Mahler Judith Németh (mezzo-soprano), Izabella Simon (piano)

Details on page 68.

There is no denying that geniuses often, whether purposefully or not, overshadow their immediate circle, families and loved ones. And this frequently occurs even when their closest relations are blessed with talents similarly worthy of attention.

This song recital by Izabella Simon and Judit Németh brings to the fore three such talented women, wives and sister, juxtaposing their compositions against the two brilliant husbands, Schumann and Mahler, and the no less inspired brother Mendelssohn. We are taken on this journey of discovery in the company of the magical voice of Judit Németh, a sound that has captivated Bayreuth audiences on several occasions, with sensitive piano accompaniment by Izabella Simon.

Tickets: HUF 4 900, 3 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Tickets: HUF 2 500, 1 600 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Sarastro – Krisztián Cser Tamino – Dániel Pataki-Potyók Queen of the Night – Zita Szemere Pamina – Ildikó Jakab Papageno – Álmos Gyarmati Papagena – Eszter Zavaros Speaker/2nd priest – Máté Szécsi 1st lady – Lilla Horti 2nd lady – Klára Vincze 3rd lady – Alexandra Ruszó Monostatos/1st priest – Béla T. Gippert Flute – Kata Scheuring Artemisia Chamber Orchestra Alpaslan Ertüngealp (conductor)

Judit Németh

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Thursday 19 December 2013 / 19.30

Friday 20 December 2013 / 19.00

Saturday 21 December 2013 / 16.00

Grand Hall

Chamber Hall

Grand Hall

Black and White Colours Piano Recital by Balázs Szokolay

Christmas Concert with the Hungarian Radio Children’s Choir

Schumann: Fantasy in C major, Op. 17 Liszt: Piano Sonata in B minor

Works of Kodály, Bartók, Péter Tóth, Miklós Mohay

Balázs Szokolay (piano)

Zsuzsanna Arany (piano) Hungarian Radio Children’s Choir László Matos, Sándor Kabdebó, Beáta Szűcs (conductors)

Liszt Prize winner Balázs Szokolay has been active in the Hungarian classical music scene for 40 years.

In the early years of his career he lifted a whole swathe of trophies at foreign competitions (Ústí nad Labem, Glasgow, Zwickau, Leeds, Brussels, Montreal) either as a pianist or as a member of chamber music ensembles.

Today, he is more commonly found sitting on the jury of prestigious international competitions or acting as the chief player giving masterclasses, as well as in person as on the concert stage. He is a multitalented figure, an authority on the period of Romanticism in music, and, as professor at the Liszt Academy, someone who has passed on his accumulated knowledge to new generations of musicians for the past decade and a half. This recital is given over to two epoch-making (in all senses of the term) works: Robert Schumann’s Fantasy in C major, which was dedicated to Liszt, and Ferenc Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B minor, which was dedicated to Schumann.

Tickets: HUF 4 900, 3 500, 2 100 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre 92

Mozart: The Magic Flute Artistic director: Éva Marton Director: András Almási-Tóth Translation: Dániel Varró Set: Árpád Iványi Costume: Bori Tóth Choreography: Tamás Juronics Choir master: Csaba Somos Sarastro – Máté Szécsi Tamino – Dániel Pataki-Potyók Queen of the Night – Zita Szemere Pamina – Ildikó Jakab Papageno – Szabolcs Hámori Papagena – Eszter Zavaros Speaker/2nd priest – Máté Szécsi 1st lady – Lilla Horti 2nd lady – Klára Vincze 3rd lady – Alexandra Ruszó Monostatos/1st priest – Béla T. Gippert Flute – Kata Scheuring Artemisia Chamber Orchestra Alpaslan Ertüngealp (conductor) Details on page 68.

Tickets: HUF 4 900, 3 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

What more stylish way to celebrate the approach of Christmas than with a concert by the Hungarian Radio Children’s Choir on the final weekend of Advent? In a programme specially selected for the Christmas season we can enjoy choral works by Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály as well as pieces from two contemporary Hungarian composers, Péter Tóth and Miklós Mohay.

And enjoy is the operative word here, since anyone who has heard the Hungarian Radio Children’s Choir even once will know that their sound has retained its clarity and authenticity over many generations. A huge part of this is due to the skills of Gabriella Thész, the person who directed the chorus for so many years and truly shaped its vocal personality, as well as László Matos and Sándor Kabdebó, current conductors of the chorus, who follow in the footsteps of Thész.

Tickets: HUF 3 500, 2 800, 2 000, 1 500 Organizer: Hungarian Radio Music Ensembles

from the Liszt Academy’s Guest Book © Liszt Academy

Past-Bound Progression “The reconstruction of the original circumstances, like all restoration, is a pointless undertaking in view of the historicity of our being. What is reconstructed, a life brought back from the lost past, is not the original. […] Historicizing presentations – e.g. of music played on old instruments – are not as faithful as they seem. Rather, they are an imitation of an imitation and are thus in danger ‘of standing at a third remove from the truth’ (Plato).” Hans-Georg Gadamer put forward this argument in his philosophical masterwork, Truth and Method. The book’s 1960 publication coincided with one of the most important changes in the history of musical interpretation: the appearance of historically-oriented performance practice in the 1950s and ‘60s.

The first important step in the revival of early music is generally marked

by Mendelssohn’s arrangement of Bach’s St Matthew Passion in 1829, although the historical orientation at that time only meant the broadening of the repertoire. Mendelssohn reorchestrated Bach’s by then all-but-forgotten masterpiece in order to adapt it to the musical style of his own age, as later did Liszt, Busoni and Schoenberg when making their own Bach transcriptions that reflected the aesthetics of the changing times. On the other hand, the first representatives of the “historically authentic” performance turned their attention to period instruments and playing techniques, surviving scores and other contemporary evidence with a firm intent to reconstruct early music in a “historically authentic” style.

Later however, even the most eager advocates of this early music movement began to see that musical “historicism” could not be entirely carried out in practice, nor was it sustainable from a theoretical standpoint: insistence on authenticity is pointless if it means the adherence, in the era of digital recording, to the aesthetic and technical criteria of an age in which the essence of music lied precisely in the unique and unrepeatable nature of the performance.

Despite the theoretical doubts surrounding it, the historical approach which once started out as a small counter-culture movement, has grown by the early 21st century into a significant component of the classical music industry, and a new scene for some of the most exciting productions and innovative ideas. However, the popularity of these historically informed interpretations is due not so much to their historic or stylistic authenticity but to their ability to reach the music-loving audience of today who prefer lucid, well-kempt and lively performances. As László Somfai described the experience of a whole generation in his congratulation speech on Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s 70 th birthday, in the early music performance “all those masterworks which in our times were mostly rendered in a conventional, purist way, or at best with a slightly boring grandiosity, are transformed into something much more life-like and significant, thrilling and provocative.”

Gergely Fazekas

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Saturday 21 December 2013 / 19.00

Sunday 22 December 2013 / 19.30

Chamber Hall

Grand Hall

On the Spot – Big Band of the Jazz Department Liszt Academy Senior Big Band (Attila László – artistic director) Kristóf Bacsó, Tamás Ludányi (alto saxophone); Gergely Varga, Tamás Meleg (tenor saxophone); Krisztián Eördögh (baritone saxophone); Kornél Fekete-Kovács, János Hámori, Balázs Bukovinszky, Szabolcs Sári (trumpet); Ferenc Schreck, Tamás Kovács, Nóra Varga, Krisztián Csapó (trombone); Mihály Gotthárd (guitar); Dániel Szebényi (piano); Tibor Fonay (bass); László Csízi (drums) The Jazz Department of the Liszt Academy has been the number one workshop for Hungarian jazz music for close on to half a century. The roll call of both its leading-edge professors and its graduates represents the cream of jazz in Hungary. The Big Band has been an integral part of the functioning of the department ever since it was founded.

Given its nature, the Big Band line-up is always changing, with permanency perhaps best represented by excellent guitarist-composer Attila László, who has been artistic director since 1987 and at the same time the highly influential associate professor of the department.

The big band genre itself, with a past that goes back some 80 years, breaks with the most fundamental traditions of jazz music on at least two points: it builds on a finely scored choral sound instead of the primacy of soloists; and it features pieces composed from beat to beat instead of the free improvisation that is at the core of the genre.

Tickets: HUF 3 200, 2 100 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Christmas Concert Bach Cantatas with the Purcell Choir & Orfeo Orchestra Johann Sebastian Bach: Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (BWV 62) Ich freue mich in dir (BWV 133) Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot (BWV 39) Das neugeborne Kindelein (BWV 122) Aliz Ballabás, Katalin Szutrély (soprano); Zoltán Gavodi (countertenor); Bernadett Nagy (alto); Dávid Szigetvári (tenor); Domonkos Blazsó (bass) György Vashegyi (conductor) György Vashegyi, professor of continuo, taught at the Liszt Academy even before he was awarded his degree, and he became one of the most important, central personalities of early music practice in this institution, and also in domestic music life. In this latter area the two ensembles he himself founded, the Purcell Choir (1990) and Orfeo Orchestra (1991), have grown to become flagships of the early music movement in Hungary. The works of Johann Sebastian Bach have always had a prominent position in their joint appearances, as is evident in this Christmas concert programme staged in the Grand Hall of the Liszt Academy. Two of the four featured cantatas, composed in Leipzig between 1724 and 1726, are closely connected to the Christmas period.

Tickets: HUF 5 400, 4 300, 2 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

György Vashegyi © József Wágner Csapó 95

Monday 23 December 2013 / 19.00

Saturday 28 December 2013 / 19.30

Grand Hall

Grand Hall

Finals of the Géza Gárdonyi Composition Competition

Great Christmas Folk Music

Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Hungarian Radio Choir (Gábor Oláh – choir master) Gergely Vajda (conductor)

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Andrea Navratil (singing), Kálmán Balogh (dulcimer), András Berecz (singing & narrator), Szeret Ensemble

According to a 2005 national survey of readers’ favourite novels conducted by the TV programme Nagy Könyv (Big Read), which aimed to stimulate interest in reading, The Stars of Eger/ Eclipse of the Crescent Moon received more votes by far than any other work of literature in Hungary. The oeuvre of Géza Gárdonyi has, however, far more to offer readers – and, this time around, concertgoers. An exciting feature of the 2013 commemoration year, marking the 150 th anniversary of the birth of Géza Gárdonyi, is the “composers’ tender” in which applicants were asked to work up oratorio arrangements for two Christmas-related Gárdonyi works, the poem Christmas Song and the stage play Christmas Dream. The three most successful works making it into the final are performed on the night before Christmas Eve, marking the closing event of the Gárdonyi Commemoration Year.

The Liszt Academy bids farewell to the old year with a true parade of folk music stars. Singer Andrea Navratil of the ensemble Zurgó is an inspired interpreter of Moldavian Csángó songs, whose performance style and tonality sooth the spirit. The virtuoso dulcimer technique of Kálmán Balogh has, quite rightly, earned him world renown: his “modern” know-how of intense technical preparation and practice, as well as an intuitive empathy for traditional folk music, sit well together in his stunning play; in fact, among aficionados of the instrument he is considered the founder of a new school. Kossuth Prize winner András Berecz is a singer and narrator: he narrates through song, and by singing he tells a story. Known as lead singer of Egyszólam, Ökrös and Új Stílus for close on 25 years, Berecz has also gained renown as a collector of folk songs. Szeret Ensemble provide foot-tapping accompaniment, playing Romanian, Slovak, Serb and Roma tunes with equal verve.

Tickets: HUF 2 000 Organizer: Zsongó Bárka Society

Tickets: HUF 5 400, 4 300, 2 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Béla Bartók plays on hurdy-gurdy in his Budapest home (1908) © MTA BTK ZTI, Bartók Archives

Hungarian Folk Music Passes Test without Mentor It would appear that Hungarian folk music does not consult with scientific experts, culture policy supremoes or the leading lights of music life. Without a word and with unbelievable vitality, it has simply taken over the dance floors of universities, large concert halls and theatre stages; indeed, it has enslaved the thoughts of the industrialists of TV shows. There can be very few similar examples in the history of universal culture where a tradition forcibly uprooted from its original medium has undergone such a renaissance.

If we continue the noble tradition of Bartók and Kodály and examine the topic with scientific rigour, we find both tasty and indigestible components in the aspic of the wave of success. Very few people take time to ponder the genuine meaning of Hungarian folk music in the midst of the storm of prolonged applause. Analysis of this compound word would be a topic worthy of a doctoral thesis: as far as folk musicians are concerned, the term “Hungarian” means, quite naturally, the faithful interpretation of the music tradition of multi-ethnic regions; as far as “folk music” goes, well this has still not shaken off an ideological overtone, and drags with it the baggage of 19th century Romantic concepts, the absurdities of the formation of a modern national consciousness and post-communist symptoms.

Projected through a prism, the full spectrum is revealed, from Bartalus to Bartók, from coffee houses to barn dances. András Batta, rector of the Liszt Academy, described very succinctly folk music that can be heard today in Hungary as being a digressive trend somewhere between the amplitudes of zeal for the preservation of orthodox tradition and world music, since we can listen to folk music not only in its original form but also where it has been put into the service of individual artistic ambitions.

The original environment of folk music, the traditional peasant communities, have all but disappeared; thus today folk music does not appear in its own environment but instead as a contemporary artistic trend.

While we read on our smartphones news about the latest Hungarian successes at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the breeze from the former Moszkva Square brings not Beatles fragments played to the accompaniment of creaking Cremona guitars but instead rustic hurdy gurdy music or maybe a snatch of dance music from Szászcsávás. To make sure the picture is complete, we should add that five years after Hungarian folk music was awarded a university chair at the Liszt Academy, the dance house movement that was launched exactly 40 years ago received prestigious international recognition when, in 2011, the UNESCO Intergovernment Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage entered the dance house method into the register of “best preservation practices”, recognizing the method as a unique Hungarian model for the transmission of intellectual cultural heritage.

Mátyás Bolya 97

Sunday 29 December 2013 / 19.00

Sunday 29 December 2013 / 19.30

Chamber Hall

Grand Hall

Concerto Armonico Budapest Corelli: Sonata in G minor, Op. 1/10 Corelli: Sonata in E major, Op. 2/10 Corelli: Sonata in C major, Op. 3/8 Vivaldi: Violin Concerto in E major (RV 271 – ‘L’Amoroso’) J. S. Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D major (BWV 1050) Márta Ábrahám (violin), Ildikó Kertész (flute) Concerto Armonico Budapest Miklós Spányi (harpsichord, artistic director)

márta ábrahám

Concerto Armonico, who celebrate the 30th anniversary of their foundation this year, were created from the coming together of undergraduates of the Liszt Academy in 1983. Playing on period instruments, they cultivated and popularized (in a pioneering fashion in Hungary) the practice of historical performance. After playing in Hungary to considerable acclaim, the ensemble gained an international name under artistic director Miklós Spányi, performing at concerts and festivals abroad. Among the many Budapest recordings of Concerto Armonico, the series comprising the entire collection of keyboard concertos of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach made for record label BIS is of ground-breaking significance.

Its release was hailed by music critics as a sensation around the world. This concert includes concertos by Vivaldi and Bach, as well as three sonatas by Corelli, in an orchestral arrangement true to 18th century practice.

Tickets: HUF 4 200, 2 800 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

98

Benkó Dixieland Band Guests: Myrtill Micheller, Tamás Berki Benkó Dixieland Band: Sándor Benkó (clarinet, leader), Iván Nagy (trombone, vocals), Béla Szalóky (trumpet, trombone, vocals), Vilmos Halmos (piano, vocals), Gábor Kovacsevics (drums), Miklós Csikós (double bass), Pál Gáspár (banjo, vocals) One would be hard pushed to imagine greater praise for a Hungarian jazz band than when a person born and brought up on authentic ragtime refers to the group as one of the best in the world.

Yet this is exactly what happened to the Benkó Dixieland Band, and the words of praise came from none other than former US president Ronald Reagan.

The story of their formation, headed up by clarinettist Sándor Benkó, is stunning even when told in numbers: 56 years of activity, 81 or so recordings, more than 10,000 concert appearances, a good three dozen prizes and awards, and an uncountable number of world stars – indeed legends (from Milt Jackson to Buddy Tate) – who have played with the band at one time or another.

Tickets: 12 000, 10 000, 8 000, 6 000 Ft Organizer: Filharmónia Budapest Ltd.

Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch: Pilgrimage to the Fount of Art © József Hajdú

Liszt Kidz Academy – Youth Programs at the Liszt Academy Every child is born with music in them. There is not a single infant who would not be stirred by the music of Mozart or Bach. Or maybe Gangnam Style, depending on what they hear at home. Naturally, the youth programmes of the Liszt Academy are not intended to acquaint kids with the values of pop culture, but instead with the three worlds of music that define the academy’s teaching and concert life: classical music, folk music and jazz.

The purpose of the music academy’s youth programmes, operating under the code name Liszt Kidz Academy, is not to raise musicians but rather to create the audience of the future. We intend to show those children who listen to Goldberg Variations at home more of the wonders of this infinite intellectual universe, while those growing up in the shadow of Lady Gaga can explore as yet unheard musical lands.

The Liszt Academy youth programmes rest on three pillars. The whole scheme launches in 2013 at an experimental level; from spring 2014 we will have expanded somewhat (including the presence of our own Liszt Kidz website); and from autumn 2014 the Liszt Kidz Academy will be open to young people (and of course, parents and grandparents) in its full glory.

One of the pillars comprises weekly activities for small groups of 6–10-yearolds. Not only are these children taught about the different music genres and forms and shown – and allowed to handle – various instruments, but they are also initiated into the operational mechanism of concert organization.

We will be building a scale model of the Grand Hall in Lego bricks, and children can then play with Lego figures, showing how the artists arrive, the preparations for the concert, where the audience gathers and so on.

The other two elements of the youth programmes are Chamber and Grand Hall concerts, where the children can see and hear for themselves how the music comes alive.

Many are of the view that music is simply entertainment. They are not correct. Music teaches us the essence of what it is to be human, and this is why it is never too early to start learning about it. Shakespeare put it like this: “The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus: Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.”

We will hold three Liszt Kidz activity sessions at the Liszt Academy on Liszt Ferenc Square during autumn 2013. These small group activities are for children aged between 6 and 10 years old. Concert and opera videos will be screened for parents in one of the rooms nearby. The activity session is to be held in Hungarian.

Dates: Saturday 26 October / 10.00; Saturday 23 November / 10.00; Saturday 14 December / 10.00 Tickets: HUF 900 The Liszt Kidz Academy is supported by LEGO Hungária Ltd.

100

Annie Fischer with children © Gábor Fejér

2014 Preview 12 January 2014

23 January 2014 26 January 2014

16 February 2014

26 February 2014

18 March 2014

20 MARCH 2014 30 MARCH 2014

7 April 2014

18 MAY 2014

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Song Recitals at the Liszt Academy Andrea Rost & Kálmán Oláh Chanticleer: She said/he said CHAMBER MUSIC – TUNED FOR GRAND HALL Evgeni Koroliov & Keller Quartet Thomas Hengelbrock & Balthasar-Neumann-Ensemble CHAMBER MUSIC – TUNED FOR GRAND HALL Takács Quartet CHAMBER MUSIC – TUNED FOR GRAND HALL Kristóf Baráti Violin Recital Vijay Iyer Trio (usa) CHAMBER MUSIC – TUNED FOR GRAND HALL Elena Bashkirova & Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival CHAMBER MUSIC – TUNED FOR GRAND HALL Joshua Bell, Steven Isserlis, Dénes Várjon Amadinda 30

LISZT ACADEMY GRAND HALL

CHICK COREA 13.05.2014.

LISZT ACADEMY GRAND HALL

PEKKA KUUSISTO MAHLER CHAMBER ORCHESTRA 10.06.2014.

Winning the laurels The first edition of Concert Magazine, as well as the next issue being published in November 2013, offer a glimpse into the logic, aesthetics and semantic mysteries of the birth of the unified, new music academy image. We have attempted to create a representative image of the university and concert centre – an institution with a kind of dual capacity – which, in its various elements, enjoyed considerable international prestige earlier, but in its totality is a completely new entity, using criteria similar to those for a global brand. We started structuring the image, logos, new website and new communications and media strategy embedded in the texture of historicality and tradition. The tense arc of patina-progress appeared an exciting and constructive starting point; the public procurement call for tenders for the image and website also contained several hundred pages of professional support material: historical, architectural, philosophical, philological, art history research and the formulation of quintessential elements resulted in the discovery of the keys (it is up to the reader to decide with what success).

Now we undertake to give an overview of a fundamental issue that is highly complex in its apparent simplicity. What should we call this unparalleled institution in its new unity? College or academy? This very question was posed by professor of music history János Kárpáti, director of the music academy’s Central Library, in the columns of the journal Muzsika in 1997. Although in the meantime the college was transformed into a university, the reply remains valid even after a decade and a half: “This question never arose for the concertgoer […]. The concertgoer came to the Grand Hall or Chamber Hall of the Liszt Academy, where he or she could listen – in an elegant environment and amidst ideal acoustic circumstances – to, for instance, the piano playing of Béla Bartók and Ernő Dohnányi, the violin playing of Jenő Hubay and Ede Zathureczky, who were teachers or directors of this very institution. However, for those studying here this was not always so unambiguous.”

In 1875 the institution was formally titled the National Hungarian Royal Academy of Music, and this name was inscribed in the facade of the building on Liszt Ferenc Square, which was inaugurated in 1907. Logically, the Art Nouveau palace of music took on the name of the institution. In 1918, both the ‘Royal’ and ‘Academy’ were dropped: the minister of religion and education authorized the academy of music to bear the title National Hungarian College of Music, which then took on the name of Ferenc Liszt on its fiftieth anniversary, in 1925. Although up until the reconstruction work started in 2011 the facade of the building still displayed Liszt Ferenc College of Music, the situation was further complicated by the fact that the institution was awarded university status in 1971, and only 30 years later did the name Liszt Ferenc University of Music become commonly applied.

From time to time there were thoughts of restoring the term ‘academy’, although these efforts were regularly thwarted by concern over misleading parallels with the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Besides Plato’s definition of the word as a ‘school of learning’ there was and still is a second meaning, that of ‘an institution of higher education with a single faculty’. The London Royal Academy of Music founded in 1822, the Warsaw Chopin Academy, 106

Restoration of the Grand Hall (1962) © Sándor Bojár / MTI

The principal logo of the family of institutions draws on the iconography of the main building of the Liszt Academy on Liszt Ferenc Square, bringing it into a visual unity while harmonically resolving the tension between patina and progress, blending Art Nouveau and contemporary minimalist stylistic motifs, while the historicist yet still contemporary typography forming an integral part of the logo provides the opportunity for the institutes and sections of the parent body to assert their independent entity in a coherent and consistent system, and at the same time it expresses – in a more determined way than any previous attempt – that characteristic unity that affirms them as a part of the undiminished tradition of 138 years.

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the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, the Janáček Academy in Brno, the Musashino Academy in Tokyo, furthermore music academies in Basel and Hong Kong also bear this formulation. However, distinguished Italian, French and Spanish schools are regularly called conservatories (conservatoire, conservatorio) – used in Hungary as a synonym for vocational secondary schools of music. The expression ‘Hochschule’ is used for music institutions of higher education in the German-speaking zone, which has always served as an important example for Hungarian music circles.

The Budapest Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music is outstanding on an international comparison from several aspects: its founder is Ferenc Liszt, and in the wake of an initiative of Zoltán Kodály it offers not only music training but musicology courses as well, and what is more, to the very highest (doctoral) level. In February 1997 the university senate chose the name ‘Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music’, although in an educational context it has been impossible to avoid the use of Liszt Ferenc University of Music, while the principal concert venue continues to be called the Zeneakadémia (literally, Academy of Music) by the Hungarian public (in English, the concert venue is called the Liszt Academy). In the meantime, students refer to their Alma Mater with the abbreviations LFZE (standing for Liszt Ferenc University of Music), official usage in the tertiary admissions system, or the deeply entrenched ZAK (for Academy of Music).

With the further expansion and growth of the Liszt Academy, the problematic naming now no longer concerns only the totally renewed building on Liszt Ferenc Square, colloquially known as the Academy of Music by the concertgoing public, and the university of music that operates within it. The naming has grown to become a key issue fundamentally determining the identity of the uniquely varied cultural citadel integrating a dozen other venues and institutes – including the Liszt Museum, Kodály Institute, and even the Ligeti György building – and also functioning as an independent concert centre from 2013.

A team from the Communications, Marketing and Media Content Development Directorate, set up in February 2013 and holding authorization from the university rector, was charged with bringing about a semblance of order within this confusion of names. In May 2013 the university senate decided, with due consideration to the need to retain the ‘brand name’ deeply etched in the public mind, to go with the Hungarian, short and practical Zeneakadémia (Academy of Music), although only the English version of this, Liszt Academy, refers to the founder, as the primary title. From now on the name represents an umbrella brand expressing the extended educational, cultural and concert centre functions in a common unit, but at the same time it refers to the renovated main building as a concert venue.

The full formal name of the institution, used for protocol purposes only, is changed to Liszt Ferenc Zeneművészeti és Zenetudományi Egyetem, Koncertközpont (Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music and Musicology, Concert Centre), while the section with rights for the organization of public concerts, independent programme making and sales will, according to plans, shortly be a separate legal entity, albeit operating in nonprofit corporate form in 100% ownership of the university, as the Liszt Academy Concert Centre.

TEACHING LOCATIONS OF THE LISZT ACADEMY The main building on Liszt Ferenc Square is the hub for both Liszt Academy concerts and university teaching. During the years of reconstruction the academy rents several temporary sites for educational purposes.

After the final return of the departments planned for the first part of 2014, the university retains three other buildings in which it conducts its everyday activities.

Ligeti György building Of historical monument status, the building at Wesselényi utca 52 was renovated within the framework of the Liszt Academy – the resurgent centre of European music higher education in Budapest project, and came under the control of the university on 1 October 2011, when it was formally named after György Ligeti. The governing body of the university is based here, as are the offices of support administrative sections (Rector’s office, Secretariat, Communication and Marketing, Event Organization, Registrar’s Department, Doctoral Office, Finance, Accounting, Controlling, Human Resources, Labour Affairs, Department of International Affairs and Development, IT, Operations).

The building also contains lecture rooms (fully fitted with audiovisual equipment) suitable for teaching both theoretical and music subjects, a professional studio also appropriate for the organization of chamber concerts, and 28 practice rooms.

Semmelweis Street building Since 1949 this former tenement block has been home to today’s Bartók Conservatory, originally the Budapest Teacher Training Institute of the Liszt Academy. Following the merger of the college and university courses (2007) and the closure of the main building on Liszt Ferenc Square (2009), the entire woodwind, cimbalom, piano coaching and singing training classes of the Liszt Academy moved here. From the start of the academic year 2013, compulsory piano classes, and some of the percussion, string, guitar and chamber music classes and theoretical classes, along with several other facultative courses, are held here.

Ligeti György building © Dániel Végh 110

Old Academy of Music This building on a corner of Andrássy Avenue opened in 1875 and was the second headquarters of the institution. It served as a venue for academy teaching from autumn 1879 to the middle of 1907. For many subsequent decades it served different functions, then in 1980 it came back into the ownership of the Liszt Academy. Today, this is where classes in church music, the organ, harpsichord and harp are held, as well as foreign language courses, chamber music, strings and guitar lessons. The Chamber Hall is a favourite concert venue; a door from here opens directly into the rooms of the final residence of Liszt in Pest, today a museum.

ASSOCIATED INSTITUTIONS OF THE LISZT ACADEMY

Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum and Research Centre The Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum and Research Centre opened in the building of the Old Academy of Music in September 1986. The basis for the collection of the museum is formed from the instruments of Liszt donated to the Liszt Academy, the collection of books and sheet music marked with the stamp of the Liszt bequest, a few items of furniture, portraits, sculptures and other personal effects. Visitors can see a permanent exhibition set up in the entrance room, Liszt’s bedroom-study and salon of the flat that now functions as a museum, while there are temporary, theme-specific displays in the former dining room and ground floor foyer. The Research Centre, one of the leading institutions carrying out international Liszt research studies, was set up attached to the museum in 1986.

Zoltán Kodály Pedagogical Institute of Music An 18th century Franciscan monastery building in the city centre of Kecskemét was restored between 1973 and 1975 in order to serve the aims of the Zoltán Kodály Pedagogical Institute of Music. In the early 1980s, the building was extended with a new section to make room for offices, classrooms, a music library and audiovisual studio. The goal of the international Kodály seminar that has been organized every summer since 1975 is to provide foreign music teachers with the opportunity to learn the Kodály method, as well as creating a further training possibility for Hungarian singing teachers. Over the past several decades more than 700 music teachers from 50 countries have taken part in the courses.

Old Academy of Music © Miklós Török

Kodály Museum Zoltán Kodály lived in the Körönd (Circus), which has borne his name since 1982, from October 1924 until his death in March 1967. While Emma, his first wife, was alive she oversaw the filing of newspaper cuttings and other documentation tracing the musician’s career. After her death Kodály’s second wife, Sarolta Péczely, continued this work in the same spirit. The collection that was thus established forms the basis of the Kodály Archive, which operates on scientific principles, and with the help of the Zoltán Kodály Pedagogical Institute of Music, Kecskemét, the Kodály Memorial Museum was set up. In the spring of 1990, the museum opened up those rooms that had remained virtually untouched since their owner of immortal memory had left them.

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The Liszt Academy in numbers

No. of teachers

168 No. of students

831 No. of sub-departments

42 No. of departments

12 No. of courses: Bachelor (BA)

43 Master (MA)

34 Teacher MA (unified+MA)

44 DLA

8 The Liszt Academy has one of the highest proportion (19.13%) of foreign students among domestic higher educational institutions in the academic year 2012/2013 Average number of enrolled students per teacher in Budapest

4.54 in Kecskemét (2011)

1.61 No. of national scientific/art prizes, awards (2011)

517 No. of concerts by professors (2011) Hungary

3388 abroad

933 Prizes and placings of students between 2008 and 2012: at competitions in Hungary

262 at international competitions

278 112

Béla Bartók Grammar School and Vocational Secondary School of Music The Bartók Conservatory is Hungary’s oldest intermediate school of music.

Its predecessor, the Hungarian National Conservatoire, was established in 1840 as the School of Singing of the Pest-Buda Hangász Society.

Liszt played a leading role in providing the resources for the initiative; in fact, he donated the proceedings of two highly successful concerts to the society. Until the foundation of the Liszt Academy in 1875, the National Conservatoire was reckoned to be the most prestigious venue for the teaching of music in Hungary. From 1948 the school continued functioning as the State Conservatory; it took the name of Béla Bartók in 1966, and from 1973 it operated as the School of Teaching Practice of the Liszt Ferenc College of Music. Since 2008, the Ferenc Erkel Elementary Jazz Music Institute and the Vocational Secondary School of Jazz Music have operated as part of the conservatory. Currently more than 300 students study in 23 departments of the Bartók Conservatory.

Vocational Secondary School for Musical Instrument Makers The Vocational Secondary School for Musical Instrument Makers was set up in 1991 with the aim of preserving and expanding the extremely valuable collection of musical instruments owned by the Liszt Academy.

The maintenance, repair, and perhaps even restoration of just a single instrument, the value of which may well be many millions of forints, requires precise, accurate, responsible and occasionally artistic effort. A maximum of 50 young people with school leaving certificates complete a 3-year, full-time course certified by the National Qualifications Register.

Béla Bartók Residential Hall The building at Városligeti fasor 33, was originally built by the most renowned master of turn-of-the-century bourgeois villa architecture Emil Vidor for his family in 1905. Pioneer of atomic research Leó Szilárd, oldest son of the uncle of the architect, grew up in this house, although Emil Vidor never lived there himself. To this day the building preserves its civil character and original Art Nouveau motifs. The mixed halls of residence provide accommodation for nearly 100 students. Most of the rooms are 3and 4-bed; rooms in the basement are available for music practice between 7 am and 10 pm. All students enrolled with the university may apply for a place in the residential hall. The student union assists in processing applications.

Library The library was established in 1875 at the same time as the Liszt Academy.

It grew to become the most important music collection in the country.

In 1880, it held 4000 works of music in 560 volumes and 180 books. In his will Ferenc Liszt, who was personally interested in the formation of the library, left his entire Budapest bequest to the academy. In 1924 the library material was reorganized, with separate catalogues drawn up for works of music and books, while every process from cataloguing and loans to acquisitions has been handled electronically since October 2005.

Following university integration, the Central Library became a member institution of the sheet music library of the Budapest Institute of Teacher Training, and the Library of the Zoltán Kodály Pedagogical Institute of Music, Kecskemét. The total current stock comprises 450,000 music scores, 70,000 books and 100 different journals.

Cycles of the savannah © Iván Éder

The Liszt Academy presents: International Kodály Institute „Sej Nagyabonyban csak két torony látszik, de Majlandban harminckettő látszik; inkább nézem az abonyi kettőt, mint Majlandban azt a harminckettőt” (Hey, in Nagyabony only two towers are visible, but thirty-two in Majland; I’d rather see the two in Abony than those thirty-two in Majland) sang participants of the summer seminar of the Kodály Institute, Kecskemét, at the closing concert of the Kodály Festival staged on the main square of the town on 2 August. The monumental closing chorus of Kodály’s Háry János came forth from the throats of more than 200 foreign guests with elemental force. Young and old alike were there on the stage, many of them guests who have been returning here for years, plenty of happy singers and instrumentalists, music teachers and conductors who travelled from 33 countries to one of the most important global centres of music teaching, the Kecskemét International Kodály Institute inaugurated in 1975 and which has also functioned as the department of music teaching of the Liszt Academy for the past eight years.

Naturally, it is not only each summer that it is worth observing what is going on in the Kodály Institute. Every year several dozen foreign students attend year-long classes, short courses and graduate training courses at the institute. Guest researchers regularly use the archives for their studies; in fact, this year the collection has been further enhanced with the wealth of documents from the bequests of Dr. Klára Kokas and Cecília Vajda, preserving the practical adaptations of the Kodály method of teaching music.

Each year the permanent exhibition of the institute receives hundreds of visitors, and once a year, on the Night of Museums, all visitors are welcome to wander through this historical structure originally built as a Franciscan monastery in the 18th century.

The principal attraction of the institute lies in the fact that to this day it is able to present to students learning there, in the most authentic form, the outstanding tradition of Hungarian music pedagogy hallmarked by the name of Kodály, and the practice structured on the Kodály concept that is being constantly developed to meet the challenges and requirements of the modern day. Exploiting the international significance and influence of Hungarian music pedagogy, it is our principal endeavour to see that it becomes – in this period burdened with crises – a point of reference and catalyser in processes designed to further strengthen the standard of music teaching in Hungary.

Dr. László Norbert Nemes 114

Be There at the Beginning of a New Era!

Patron’s Club: grades Patron Philanthropic supporter Partner supporter Patriot supporter Andante box Allegro box Vivace box Apollo box Chairholder

Liszt Ferenc Patrons’ Club The rebirth of the music centre on Liszt Ferenc Square marks a major milestone in the history of the Liszt Academy. It is the duty and the sincere wish of the institute to continue distinguished traditions, but in order for this to be achieved authentically and successfully it is also essential to bear in mind the changed patron environment of the 21st century. The Liszt Ferenc Patrons’ Club was established with this in mind, as a refinement to the typical frames of patronage.

Supporters of the Liszt Academy, dedicated to classical music, have won enduring praise for bringing to fruition many ambitious plans. The goal of the loyalty programme of the Liszt Ferenc Patrons’ Club is to provide a platform for them to express their commitment to the academy. However, it is not sufficient merely to retain the existing audience and bind them more closely to the institution; perhaps the most pressing challenge of the new era is to win over completely new segments to high music culture. The Patrons’ Club will have a key role to play in this effort.

The loyalty programme is a form of patronage within which the Liszt Academy offers dedicated club members enhanced attention according to their particular contribution. Supporters receive every opportunity to participate in the everyday life of the Liszt Academy: they gain an insight into the workshops active in the university and concert centre, and they can keep track of the development of talented musicians learning there. Supporters of the Liszt Academy are among the first to be informed about the tiniest flutters in the life of the institution, and they get advance notice of the biggest concerts in the upcoming season at regular meetings. In short, members of the Patrons’ Club – irrespective of the level of their contribution – can be “front row” eye and ear witnesses to the 21st century history of the Liszt Academy.

We trust that following the reopening of the beautifully restored Liszt Academy you too will become a member of the Liszt Ferenc Patrons’ Club and that together we will build a successful future for our internationally renowned institution of music.

Erika Nyúl External Relations Manager 115

Concert chronology Concerts organized by Liszt Academy Concert Centre Hosted concerts Classical Jazz Opera Folk Junior Other

Sunday 3 November 2013 / 19.30

Thursday 14 November 2013 / 19.30

Chamber Music – Tuned for Grand Hall Kelemen Quartet Page 18

Génie Oblige !

– 138th Anniversary Gala of the Liszt Academy (Page 42)

Tuesday 5 November 2013 / 19.30

Sunday 17 November 2013 / 19.30

Brad Mehldau The First Budapest Solo Concert

Black and White Colours Pianist Generations

Wednesday 6 November 2013 / 19.30

Monday 18 November 2013 / 19.30

On The Spot – Folk Music Department

Beyond music…

Tamás Vásáry’s Musical Conversations IV/1

Page 22

Page 22

Tuesday 25 October 2013 / 19.00

Opening Gala (private)

Page 7

Friday 25 October 2013 / 19.30

Jeney 70 Birthday Gala of zoltán jeney Page 11 Sunday 27 October 2013 / 19.30

Black and White Colours Dezső Ránki, Edit Klukon, Fülöp Ránki (Page 11) Tuesday 29 October 2013 / 19.30

Tamás Vásáry 80 Surprise Concert Page 11 Thursday 31 October 2013 / 19.00

MÁV Symphony Orchestra

Page 16

Friday 1 November 2013 / 19.30

Concerto Budapest

Budapest Festival Orchestra Page 28

Friday 8 November 2013 / 19.45

Budapest Festival Orchestra Page 28

Saturday 9 November 2013 / 15.30

Budapest Festival Orchestra Page 28

Saturday 9 November 2013 / 19.30

On the Spot – 115th Anniversary Gala of the Trombone Department Page 32

Sunday 10 November 2013 / 11.00

Dohnányi Orchestra Budafok

Page 32

Page 16

Sunday 10 November 2013 / 19.45

Saturday 2 November 2013 / 15.30

Budapest Festival Orchestra

Zugló Philharmonic

Page 16

Sunday 3 November 2013 / 11.00

Jubilee Symphony Orchestra of Szent István Király High School Page 18

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Thursday 7 November 2013 / 19.45

Page 28

Monday 11 November 2013 / 19.30

Danubia Orchestra Óbuda

Page 42

Page 44 Tuesday 19 November 2013 / 19.30

Piano Concert

by Endre Hegedűs

Page 44

Wednesday 20 November 2013 / 19.30

On The Spot – The Jazz Department Page 45

Thursday 21 November 2013 / 19.30

50 Years of the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra Page 45

Friday 22 November 2013 / 19.00

MÁV Symphony Orchestra

Page 48

Saturday 23 November 2013 / 15.30

Zugló Philharmonic

Page 48

Saturday 23 November 2013 / 19.30

Dohnányi Orchestra Budafok Page 48

Sunday 24 November 2013 / 19.30

Budapest Gypsy Symphony Orchestra

Page 36

Page 50

Tuesday 12 November 2013 / 19.30

Sunday 25 November 2013 / 19.30

Steve Reich at the Liszt Academy (Page 36)

Mozart Evening with Péter Frankl (Page 50)

Friday 29 November 2013 / 19.30

Tuesday 10 December 2013 / 19.00

Friday 20 December 2013 / 19.00

Géza Anda Festival Winners of the 2012 Concours Géza Anda

Advent Concert with the New Liszt Ferenc Chamber Choir

Page 92

Page 54

Page 78

Wednesday 11 December 2013 / 19.00

Saturday 30 November 2013 10.30 and 15.00

Page 78

Story-telling Music Tale s of the Liszt Academy

Wednesday 11 December 2013 / 19.30

Page 50

Saturday 30 November 2013 / 19.00

W. A. Mozart: The Magic Flute

Beyond Music… Tamás Vásáry’s Musical Conversations IV/2 Page 80

Géza Anda Festival Piano Recital by Alexei Volodin

Friday 13 December 2013 / 19.30

Sunday 1 December 2013 / 11.00

Black and White Colours Gergely Bogányi at the Liszt Academy I. (Page 80)

Géza Anda Festival Piano Recital by Filippo Gamba

Saturday 14 December 2013 / 16.00

Page 54

Page 57

Sunday 1 December 2013 / 19.30

Géza Anda Festival Piano Recital by Dénes Várjon Page 57

Friday 6 December 2013 / 19.00

W. A. Mozart: The Magic Flute

Page 68

Friday 6 December 2013 / 19.00

Kristóf Baráti & MÁV Symphony Orchestra Page 74

W. A. Mozart: The Magic Flute

Page 86

Saturday 14 December 2013 / 19.30

30 Years Solo Concert

by Ferenc Snétberger Page 86 Sunday 15 December 2013 / 10.00

Wanderer’s Life 2.0 – in the footsteps of Verdi and Wagner Page 87

Sunday 15 December 2013 / 18.00

Kodály 131

W. A. Mozart: The Magic Flute

Saturday 21 December 2013 / 16.00

Christmas Concert with the Hungarian Radio Children’s Choir Page 92

Saturday 21 December 2013 / 19.00

On the Spot – Big Band of the Jazz Department Page 95

Sunday 22 December 2013 / 19.30

Christmas Concert Bach Cantatas with the Purcell Choir & Orfeo Orchestra Page 95

Mon day 23 December 2013 / 19.00

Finals of the Géza Gárdonyi Composition Competition Page 96

Saturday 28 December 2013 / 19.30

Great Christmas Folk Music

Page 96

Sunday 29 December 2013 / 19.00

Concerto Armonico Budapest

Page 98

Saturday 7 December 2013 / 19.30

Page 87

Sunday 29 December 2013 / 19.30

isabelle faust & Concerto Budapest (Page 74)

Tuesday 17 December 2013 / 19.00

Page 98

Sunday 8 December 2013 / 16.00

Page 91

W. A. Mozart: The Magic Flute

W. A. Mozart: The Magic Flute

Page 77

Wednesday 18 December 2013 / 19.00

Saturday 8 December 2013 / 19.30

Judith Németh & Izabella Simon “Brothers, Sisters and Lovers”

Isabelle faust & Concerto Budapest

Page 77

Monday 9 December 2013 / 19.30

Danubia Orchestra Óbuda

Page 77

Benkó Dixieland Band

Page 91

Thursday 19 December 2013 / 19.30

Black and White Colours Piano Recital

by Balázs Szokolay (Page 92) 117

Ticket map Grand Hall

CHOIR LEFT 10 – 19

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

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2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1

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2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

V IV III II I 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1

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1

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2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

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2 3 4 5 6 7 8

M1 M2 M3

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12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

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12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

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1 M3 M2 M1

RIGHT 12 – 1

LEFT 1 – 12

7

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3 2 1

4 3 2 1 5 4 3 2 1 6 5 4 3 2 1 6

LEFT 9–1

7 6 5 4 3 2 1 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 1

2 3 4 5 6 6 5 4 3 2

1

I II III IV V VI

CENTER-LEFT CENTER-RIGHT 1–7 7–1

CENTRE BALCONY The ticket maps apply to concerts organized by the Liszt Academy Concert Centre.

118

6

7 6 5 4 3 2 1 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

5

6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5

3

4

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7

5 6

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I II III IV V VI

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STALLS

6 7 1 2 3 4 6 5 1 2 3 4 6 5 1 2 3 4 5

RIGHT 1–9

1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

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12 – 1

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BALCONY RIGHT

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24 – 13

1

1

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1

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1

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12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

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1

I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVI XVIII

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1

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1

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1

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ONSTAGE SEATS: 80

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13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

STAGE

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1

19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10

V VI III II I

BALCONY LEFT

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24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13

1 – 12

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24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13

13 – 24

Legend Category 1 Category 2 Category 3 Reserved for services

RIGHT 19 – 10

Ticket map Chamber Hall

Contact, Visitor Information Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music 1061 A Budapest, Liszt Ferenc tér 8 central phone number: (1) 462-4600 ZENEAKADÉMIA Customers can also address their inquiries to KONCERTKÖZPONT kozonsegkapcsolat@zeneakademia.hu.

Legend Category 1 Category 2 Reserved for services

SAJÁT SZERVEZÉSÉBEN.

Ticketing

The temporary ticket desk of the Liszt Academy Concert Centre is located on the ground floor of Írók Boltja bookshop at the corner of Liszt Ferenc Square and Andrássy Avenue (1061 Budapest, Andrássy út 45) until 30 November 2013.

Open: 10 am – 7 pm Monday-Friday, 11 am – 7 pm Saturday.

STAGE A

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A

B

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B

I

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I

II

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V

VI

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VII

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VII

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X

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6 5 4 3 2 1

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XII

XIII 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 1 2 3 3 2 1

XIV

From 22 October to 1 December it is also possible to buy tickets in the foyer of Liszt Academy Concert Centre (Liszt Ferenc tér 8.) from the hour preceding the start of the performance until the end of the first interval.

From 1 December 2013, the ticket office of the Liszt Academy Concert Centre will operate adjacent to the main entrance of the restored Liszt Academy at Liszt Ferenc tér 8.

Ticket office general opening times: 11 am – 6 pm Monday-Sunday.

Besides these general opening times the ticket office will also be open during concerts, from the hour preceding the start of the performance until the end of the first interval.

Ticket office contact details: Tel.: (1) 321-0690 E-mail: jegy@zeneakademia.hu

XIII XIV

Staff of the ticket office will be pleased to help if you have any questions concerning Liszt Academy Concert Centre tickets. Further information on ticket purchases is available at the website of the Liszt Academy.

M3 M2 M1

M1 M2 M3 LEFT 1–7

RIGHT 7–1

STALLS

Liszt Academy opening times, tours

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szolgálati hely

Access

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0

The Liszt Academy may only be visited by the general public in guided tours that have to be booked in advance. In order to ensure undisturbed JELMAGYARÁZAT teaching conditions the building is closed to the general public during 1. kategória the day and opens 1 hour prior to the start of concerts.

For information on guided tours of the Liszt Academy please go to 2. kategória www.zeneakademia.hu.

RIGHT 8–1

BALCONY

When visiting the building guests should use the main entrance on Liszt Ferenc Square. The entrance for disabled guests and their companions can be accessed from Király Street. From here it is possible to gain mobility access by lift to the concert halls 119

Impressum Publisher:

Authors of Concert Magazine:

Dr. András Batta, President of the Liszt Academy

Dr. András Batta – musicologist, President of the Liszt Academy Mátyás Bolya – Hungarian zither and cobza player, professor of the Liszt Academy Gergely Fazekas – musicologist, assistant lecturer of the Liszt Academy József Kling – journalist, music critic Dániel Kovács – art historian, specialist author on architecture Sándor Kovács – musicologist, professor, head of department of the Liszt Academy Ferenc László – cultural historian, music critic Máté Mesterházi – musicologist, member of staff of the library of the Liszt Academy Szabolcs Molnár – musicologist, professor of the Bartók Conservatory Dr. László Norbert Nemes – conductor, Director International Kodály Institute Dr. Endre Raffay – art historian, head of the Department of History and Theory of Art, University of Pécs Tamás Vajna – member of staff of the Communications Directorate of the Liszt Academy Dániel Végh – member of staff of the Communications Directorate of the Liszt Academy Dávid Zsoldos – musicologist, Managing Director Libri Média Kft.

Editor in Chief: Imre Szabó Stein

Managing Editor: Gergely Fazekas

Layout: Allison Advertising Kft.

Concert reviews by Ferenc László.

Print preparation: High Voltage Kft.

Translators: James Stewart, Anikó Rupp English proofreading: Andrew Symons

Printing: Keskeny és Társai 2001 Kft. Published by the Communications Directorate of the Liszt Academy in 2000 copies.

The organizer retains the right to modify programmes.

Photographers and artists: Anton Schroll, István Balázs, Demeter Balla, András Bánkuti, Sándor Bojár, Gyula Czimbal, István Cser, Tamás Dobos, Iván Éder, László Emmer, Károly Escher, Gábor Fejér, Andrea Felvégi, József Hajdú, Éva Horváth, Éva Keleti, Antal Kotnyek, György Lajos, Marco Borggreve, Judit Marjai, Michael Wilson, Edit Molnár, Zsolt Pataky, Phil Slayer, Zoltán Pólya, Robert Mapplethorpe, Endre Schwanner, Aladár Székely, Dezső Sziklai, Miklós Török, Dániel Végh, József Wágner Csapó

Finalized: 10 September 2013

With particular thanks to Károly Kincses, photo-museologist.

Liszt Academy is supported by the Hungarian Ministry of Human Resources

Strategic media partners

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