Liszt Academy Concert Magazine 2014-II by Zeneakadémia

liszt academy concert magazine september-december 2014

THEY SAY THAT FIRST LOVE AND FIRST CHILD ARE DEAREST. WE CERTAINLY LOOK BACK ON THE MUSIC ACADEMY’S INCOMPARABLE FIRST CONCERT SEASON AND HEAVE A SIGH: IT WAS THE FIRST AND A “WORLD EVENT”. BUT THE SECOND AND FOLLOWING SEASONS WILL BE JUST AS DEAR TO US.

The Liszt Academy: these words evoke the indivisible unity of the concert hall and university. This gives it its power. The century of tradition and knowledge meets the talent, dynamism and rejuvenation represented by the young. All this, steeped in a century of tradition and knowledge, meets the talent, dynamism and renewal inherent in youth. The peerless acoustics of the Grand Hall and its intimate atmosphere spur us to create programmes and concert series which reflect the unity of university and professional concert life. This is what makes our concerts unique: an atmosphere and incandescence which inspires great artists to create miracles. Our students, sitting in their traditional place in the upper balcony are fired up by performances that truly strive for perfection. They are, we hope, great musicians-in-the-making. Thanks to the qualities of the building, for over a century the world's leading musicians have repeatedly returned like pilgrims to the stage of the Liszt Academy. The previous 139 years, characterised by our great masters, now continue between the newly restored walls in fitting fashion. World stars who performed last season included Brad Mehldau, Mikhail Pletnev, Alexei Volodin, Isabelle Faust, Yevgeni Korolov, David Fray, Pinchas Zukerman, Thomas Hengelbrock, Kathia Buniatishvili, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Joshua Bell, Steven Isserlis and Chick Corea – and every one of them spoke glowingly of the Liszt Academy's unique atmosphere. In 2014, the Liszt Academy is organising 123 of its own concerts and hosting 150 external productions, in addition to a further 87 examination concerts which are open to the public, and nearly as many university events (courses, exams). “Music at arm's reach” proclaims the title of the 2014 autumn series, alluding to the intimate atmosphere that can only be experienced in the Liszt Academy's Grand Hall. While preserving the series so much enjoyed by our audiences, we have created subscription series that are thematically grouped. In addition to chamber and symphony ensemble concerts, chamber music and vocal evenings, and events presenting the talents of the University's faculties, there is also separate series for early music and folk concerts, as well as matinées for youngsters, “Kidz Academy”. To highlight just a few illustrious names from the autumn series who promise us magical and vibrant atmospheres: Kim Kashkashian, Steven Isserlis, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Wenzel Fuchs, Miklós Perényi, Kristóf Baráti, Zoltán Rácz, The Kodály Quartet, Isabelle Faust, Péter Frankl, Tamás Vásáry, László Fenyő, The Hungarian National Choir, The New Liszt Ferenc Chamber Choir, The Angelica Girls Choir, Ian Bostridge, The King’s Consort, The Holland Baroque Society, Concerto Armonico Budapest, Vujicsics Group and Márta Sebestyén. I am convinced that in the 2014-2015 season we will have become richer through these immortal experiences, and I hope every music lover finds his or her natural home here and that the concerts in both the Grand Hall and the Solti Hall are to their taste. Dr. Andrea Vigh President of the Liszt Academy

The third issue of our concert magazine is a milestone. Now we can take the measure of our ambition, the breadth of our overall concept and the heights of our spirit. The Liszt Academy has a dual purpose, so by placing writings about music into the context of text and illustrations, we strive to do more than to merely present a programme calendar: we must grasp the duality of university and concert centre from the outset: creation and reception. Schopenhauer may be right: music is so elemental that it could exist even if the world didn’t. Yet changes in the world inevitably influence its reception. The main theme of this latest edition is the “global network”. Going beyond the slightly dated concept of the global village and beyond the perhaps over-mystified transforming power of the internet, we want to understand and show how the workings of the international concert and recording business are transformative. We want to explore the directions an intelligent concert hall takes when it recognises it must adjust to the needs of its changing audience. In our current issue, we continue to talk about music but we would also like to know what makes concertgoers tick. Based on its august history and its successes since reopening, we are justified in believing that the Liszt Academy is a major player in international music life: like the greatest, though, it, too, is subject to demand, period and the market. Imre Szabó Stein Editor-in-Chief / Director of the Liszt Academy's Communication and Media Development

We’re relieved to say the first season at the renovated Liszt Academy has drawn to a successful close. But the next season is already upon us so we can’t rest on our laurels. We got off to a fantastic start. Once again the beautifully restored Music Academy in Liszt Ferenc Square has captured audiences’ hearts, and it’s as if all those packed concerts still resonate within us. Audience expectations are high and we must meet them by creating new programmes while living up to the tradition and the memory of our Academy predecessors. It is with this in mind that we have set about creating next season’s programmes. A guiding principle is to make it easier for you to choose what to listen to, so we have grouped concerts into subscription series. Otherwise our basic aim remains the same: we seek to draw you into chamber music and give space to genres which are often ignored by larger concert halls. Besides internationally renowned performers, the finest Hungarian artists and not least teachers and promising talents of the Liszt Academy will be performing in these programmes. Chamber music has its special place alongside a rich repertoire of symphonic music which we offer in tandem with our resident orchestra, Concerto Budapest. Our programme continues to offer domestic and international jazz concerts, nor will lovers of authentic folk music be disappointed. Imre Szabó Stein & András Csonka © ANDREA FELVÉGI 2

András Csonka Cultural Director

PHOTO FROM THE VIRTUAL TOUR © PÁN-NORDPONT LTD.

“CONCERTS FINANCE THE MUSICAL WORLD” Concert centres fill a role in today’s international classical music market that previously belonged to the record giants, says Simon Reinink, managing director of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, which boasts an annual audience of 720,000 people. Whereas Europe remains the centre of the classical music universe, Asia has an increasingly important role in the global network, he says.

What do you think about prophecies of the decline of the symphony orchestra? There’s no question that financial support and state, government and city subsidies have been radically reduced. Although sponsorship has increased somewhat, some orchestras have had to suspend their activity. What’s clear is that survival can only be guaranteed through innovative programming and new promotional solutions. Of course a full orchestra requires a quite different approach from a group specialising in contemporary chamber music. Generally speaking an online presence is indispensable. Increasing emphasis is placed on what, these days, is almost a marketing cliché: namely, if you cannot be seen on the internet you don’t exist. Whereas before the crisis you needed just one or two marketing people for a concert venue accommodating 2500 people, such as the Concertgebouw, we now need an entire battalion. Online is a separate sub-division which contains social media in addition to traditional media communication. What sort of innovative solutions are needed in programming policy? Concert organisers are far more cautious than they used to be. The safest bets continue to be Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Mozart. The more complex composers who demand a deeper level of musical education, such as Bartók, are harder to sell. This is true of contemporary composers as well, although minimalist composers, Steve Reich, say, are an exception. Everything that is a little more difficult is a risky enterprise. But by the same token there’s a niche audience for experimentation and more serious productions – in festivals. The collapse of the global recording market has not made the situation easier. Unquestionably concerts finance the musical world: these days a CD advertises a concert, not the other way around as before. But it is a matter of life and death to retain the methods developed by the major players of the music industry so we can collaborate with those publishers that are still in business. The record companies that have the great artists under contract know best of all how to work with the media; they are capable of selling the stars to magazines, radios and television. There is some hope that in place of the traditional media, the culture of recording is surviving thanks to online sales.

SIMON REININK 4

After decades of recording companies enjoying absolute power, do you see concert centres now gaining the upper hand? Concert organisers will never be as powerful as record companies were, but it is doubtless that we have become much more influential in the recent years. Don’t changes in how people listen to music perhaps obstruct a fresh boom in concert life? Our entire lives have changed. We read books on electronic devices, we watch the news on tablets and browse our acquaintances’ tweets on our mobiles; our attention is dissipated. We have parallel activities, we multitask. Of course in in the past most people didn’t particularly go for overly lengthy and complex pieces, but now it is really the simple short compositions which can be marketed. The acoustic experience of out-of-the-ordinary locations and concert venues can hardly be compared to the sonority of venerable halls. I think it’s good if we go to other places and reach people who have had no experience of live classical music, but you don’t need the very best musicians for that. They should continue to perform solely in such venerable concert halls as the Concertgebouw or the Budapest Liszt Academy, which were built for acoustic concerts. They were designed for music to come to life in us and for it to be perfectly created. But let me stress I’m by no means against concerts in alternative venues; they are great means for promotion. Are these means enough to win the commitment of new generations? I suspect that people will always be responsive to music so long as they have ears and, thanks to their hearing, are receptive to it. We have to find how to reach them and what garnish to serve the music with. The older generation grew up going to concert halls, sitting down, politely listening to what the composer, conductor and orchestra had to say before going home. Certainly we cannot change the fundamentals of classical music; we cannot incorporate an electric guitar into a Mahler symphony, but we have to take small steps. For example, even quite serious concerts can be a greater experience with lights, projections and moving images. Tamás Vajna

A FINNISH HUNGARIAN “Pekka Kuusisto may be the best thing to happen to classical music in years,” a Guardian music critic wrote a few years ago. Kuusisto, one of the unmistakable personalities of global classical music stages, gave a sensational concert at the Liszt Academy at the end of the last season.

Leading critics seem to believe you are one of the saviours of crisis-stricken classical music. What do you think? The world is moving in an interesting direction. Every genre is accessible to everyone. From Beethoven to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. You do not have to go anywhere to hear music. For this reason, classical music concerts must become real experiences, otherwise they are of no interest. It is not enough for a concert to offer the same as a recording. There is no doubt that the traditional business model of classical music is redundant. The studio recording as an independent artistic creation cannot be sold on the market, but they can be used to promote concerts and the artist. We must be much more innovative with classical music than hitherto. Is this why you play folk music as well? Oh no. Fifteen years ago I grew interested in traditional music. Finnish, Scottish and Irish folk features in my repertoire. It also changed my playing style; my relationship with the great classical works became much more direct. There is no denying that thanks to my first teacher, Géza Szilvay, I know all about the virtuosi of Hungarian, Romanian and indeed, Eastern European folk violin playing. But the Finnish tradition is nowhere near as colourful or characterful. What’s more, we also play much slower. I use Hungarian folk traditions when, say, I’m playing Brahms because I know from music history that it draws on Hungarian roots. The same is true with Bartók, but I rely on this background in works by Ligeti and Kurtág as well. Is perhaps the Finno-Ugric relationship the reason why you know the Hungarians so well? I began studying music at the East Helsinki Music School as a student of Géza Szilvay. As you can imagine, I began participating in the Hungarian tradition very early – not just Kodály and Bartók but folk music as well. I played a tremendous amount of Hungarian music from the age of three. I also think Hungarian audiences are fantastic. Although that was my first concert at the Liszt Academy, we gave a concert of relatively unknown composers at the Palace of Arts and the hall was so large it was alienating, so I was not surprised by their reserve. But in Kaposvár I felt fantastic both times I played there. At the KAPOSFEST, a festival which my friends Katalin Kokas and Barnabás Kelemen organise, an incredible audience gathers every summer. Tempestuous, passionate, open-souled, in a way I have never encountered in Finland or anywhere else in the world. Tamás Vajna

PEKKA KUUSISTO © LISZT ACADEMY / BALÁZS MOHAI

THURSDAY 4 SEPTEMBER / 19.30

SATURDAY 6 SEPTEMBER / 20.30

SUNDAY 7 SEPTEMBER / 18.30

GRAND HALL

OPENING CONCERT OF THE PABLO CASALS INTERNATIONAL CELLO COMPETITION Kodály: Dances of Galanta Elgar: Cello Concerto in E minor, op. 85 Bartók: Concerto (BB 123) Miklós Perényi (cello) Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra Conductor: Zoltán Kocsis The next in the series of Budapest International Music Competitions founded in 1933 is the Pablo Casals International Cello Competition, named after the famous Catalonian cellist. The opening concert of the competition chaired by Casals’ widow, Maria Casals Istomin, and Csaba Onczay, professor at the Liszt Academy, starts with Dances of Galanta by Kodály (who was at one time an active cellist, too), followed by Edward Elgar’s last important work, the Cello Concerto (1919), performed by Miklós Perényi. The concerto had to wait until the 1960s before gaining popularity thanks to a recording by Jacqueline du Pré. Doubtless we’ll witness a performance of this extraordinary virtuosic composition in the spirit of Casals: after winning second prize at the Pablo Casals Competition in 1963 Perényi received invitations to attend several Casals master classes. The closing piece is Bartók’s Concerto by the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Zoltán Kocsis. Few other conductors or orchestras are capable of performing this iconic work with greater intensity and authenticity. Tickets: HUF 3 900, 5 400, 6 900 Organizer: Philharmonia Hungary Concert and Festival Agency 8

GIORA FEIDMAN & GITANES BLONDES VERY KLEZMER Giora Feidman (clarinet, bass clarinet) Mario Korunic (violin) Konstantin Ischenko (accordion) Christoph Peters (guitar) Simon Ackermann (bass) Living legend and clarinettist Giora Feidman, 78, was born into a family of klezmer musicians in Buenos Aires. For years he worked as a classical clarinettist, first with the Teatro Colón orchestra, then as a member of the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra, before he concentrated on klezmer from the 1970s. Naturally, he does not sharply delineate musical genres as he does not draw lines between different cultures, being perfectly happy to play Mozart if called on to do so. And he has become a leading figure in the process of reconciliation between Jews and Germans. Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List – in which he plays clarinet – rocketed him to international fame, yet klezmer remains his ‘true love’. Earlier, he invited musicians to play with him, but in his latest project he has joined the Munich-based Gitanes Blonde, a group formed in 1999. Why? Simply because Feidman reckons Gitanes Blondes are the best klezmer band in the world. Tickets: HUF 7 500, 9 500, 10 500, 12 500 Organizer: Art Quarter Budapest

BUDAPEST GYPSY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA AND FRIENDS Guests: Roby Lakatos, József Lendvay (violin), Sabbathsong Klezmer Band Host: Géza Tóth Principal patron: Zsolt Vattamány, Mayor of Erzsébetváros Editor, producer: Nándor Beke Farkas First violin: József Lendvai Csócsi What exactly is Gypsy music? There are few harder concepts to define. First, it’s not so much a musical genre as performance style. A mixture of extreme virtuosity, maximum flexibility and total freedom. It’s a global marvel and a true Hungaricum. Liszt, Debussy, Stravinsky and Yehudi Menuhin raved about it, and millions all over the world still do. The Gypsy Symphony Orchestra founded in 1985 is the most authentic representative of the style, having passed their thousandth concert. The programme of classical music compositions, authentic Gypsy melodies and popular tunes promises to make for a dazzling concert. The star guests are two world-class virtuosic violinists, Lakatos Roby and József Lendvay. Tickets: HUF 7 990, 8 990, 9 990 Organizer: Budapest Gypsy Symphony Orchestra Cultural Association

“THE CLARINET IS THE MICROPHONE OF MY SOUL” Giora Feidman can claim, without false modesty, responsibility for klezmer conquering the world’s great concert halls. During the course of his varied career he has visited all four corners of the world and shown his mettle in a variety of genres, from classical music to tango and world music. He does not believe in styles: klezmer is not a particular treasure trove of melodies or a sound world but the most direct expression of the ancient human instinct for singing.

The history of Giora Feidman's family is rooted in a now lost culture, in Bessarabia, a distant corner of the multi-cultural world of Eastern Europe, where Jewish and Gypsy musicians would play together at weddings of Romanians, Ukrainians, Bulgarians and even Germans. The horrors of the 20th century saw the Feidman family of musicians swept away to Argentina, where Giora decided to follow in the footsteps of his ancestors. As a talented clarinettist, the eighteen-year old found himself a job in the Teatro Colón orchestra. But he only managed to resist the temptation of moving to the newly founded State of Israel for two years. As he explained to the Liszt Academy Concert Magazine, he set off on the long journey to the new homeland with only a contract with the Israeli Philharmonic in his pocket. Feidman thinks the expression “melting pot” is just as true of Israel as it is of the United States. In klezmer the Jewish people brought with them the musical influences they encountered in the course of their exodus. In the early 1970s Feidman resolved to devote his life to Jewish music. He moved to New York and soon proved to his sceptical peers that it is possible to pack concert halls with programmes of klezmer music. “The word klezmer comprises two words: kli and zemer, which means the instrument of song. The instrument is me myself. I can express the melody I feel in my soul best in a musical language, on the clarinet. The clarinet is the microphone of my soul. The essence of klezmer is that it does not spring from thoughts, nor is it influenced by beliefs but it is in my body. For my music is prayer without religion” said the seventy-eight-year-old. “Authentic” klezmer, mainly found in the United States defies interpretation, he thinks, due to the countless influences that have affected Jewish music. “On what basis should we choose, say, klezmer influenced by Eastern Europe rather than the Middle East?” But he is none too happy to heed those who tell him how to play Mozart or Bach. “In your opinion, this isn't Bach I'm playing? No problem, then it is Feidman”. Giora Feidman has done much with his musical career to foster peace between Germans and Jews. Theatre and film director Peter Zadek asked him to play the lead role in Joshua Sobol's work Ghetto which scored a huge success in Germany. Talking about this, he says “naturally I understand if an Israeli does not want to go to Germany. But in my opinion, reconciliation is one the greatest manifestations of humanity. We cannot forget the Holocaust; it is a permanent point of reference in history. But what can a child do about it who is born today? I think exactly the same about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

GIORA FEIDMAN © FELIX BROEDE

Péter Lorenz 9

FRIDAY 12 SEPTEMBER / 15.00 SATURDAY 13 SEPTEMBER / 19.30

SUNDAY 14 SEPTEMBER / 18.00

GRAND HALL

Pablo Casals International Cello Competition FINAL AND GALA Featuring the competition prize winners MR Symphony Orchestra Conductor: Gergely Vajda “The Grand Hall of the Music Academy was the venue for a sensational concert this evening. Pablo Casals, the world famous Spanish cellist, and Hungarian Tivadar Szántó were the sensational performers. Pablo Casals is new to us; this was his first performance in Budapest. He is short, balding and ordinary in appearance. Only in his deep-set eyes does something unusual burn. And when he draws the bow across the strings, then we know that this is the fire of genius that burns within him. There is astounding power, simplicity and truth in his playing.” Whether by the end of the 2014 Pablo Casals International Cello Competition we’ll be able to express ourselves in the same way as the writer Géza Csáth, who wrote about Casals’ debut in Budapest in 1910, is impossible to say. One thing is certain, however, and that is that the gala concert promises to be memorable for anyone interested in the future of classical music and the current field of cellists. The finest cellists are partnered by the Symphony Orchestra of the Hungarian Radio and Gergely Vajda. Tickets (Final): HUF 2 000 Tickets (Gala): HUF 2 000, 2 500, 3 000, 3 900 Organizer: Philharmonia Hungary Concert and Festival Agency 10

ZUGLÓ PHILHARMONICS BUDAPEST 60 Erkel: Festive Overture Stravinsky: Scherzo Fantastique, op. 3 Franck: Psalm 150 (FWV 69) R. Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier – suite Kodály: Dances of Galanta Zugló Philharmonics Budapest – King Stephen Symphony Orchestra and Oratorio Choir (artistic director: Kálmán Záborszky) Conductors: Kálmán Záborszky, Gergely Ménesi, Gábor Horváth The ever-youthful Zugló Philharmonics Budapest celebrate the 60th anniversary of their foundation this year. Formed in 1954 by József Záborszky, today the renowned orchestra is headed by his son, Kálmán Záborszky. Their energy-packed concerts are always an experience, and the ensemble are an example of how a love of music and enthusiasm are capable of keeping initiatives alive over decades. All three conductors engaged with the ensembles of the Zugló Philharmonics Budapest (Kálmán Záborszky, Gergely Ménesi and Gábor Horváth) take part in the festive concert, while the programme features two Hungarian classics, Erkel’s Festive Overture and Kodály’s masterpiece Dances of Galanta, together with dazzling orchestral compositions by Stravinsky and Strauss, and an arrangement of César Franck’s uplifting choral work, Psalm 150. Tickets: HUF 1 900, 2 100, 2 500 Organizer: Zugló Philharmonics Budapest

ZUGLÓ PHILHARMONICS

A MAJESTIC OAK A sixty-year-old oak tree is mature. It deserves respect. It may grow to be fifteen metres tall and we may not be able to fully embrace its trunk. Its canopy is expansive, its roots sunk deep in the earth. It stands guard over the other inhabitants of the forest in the fullness of its strength and the command of its gaze. This is how I see the Zugló Philharmonia which is celebrating its sixtieth anniversary this year: a healthy tree with strong roots, splendid foliage and yet still developing amid the depths of Hungarian music life.

Its roots go back to 1954 when the enthusiastic singing teacher of the Zugló István First Secondary School, József Záborszky, formed the King St Stephen Symphony Orchestra from among his students. It began as a sixteen-member ensemble, but two years later it had grown to embrace eighty young musicians, giving a concert at the Liszt Academy, and within a few years, establishing itself as a leading player on the concert podium. József Záborszky, and later his son and successor in music and teaching, Kálmán Záborszky, had an even bigger dream: through their experiences of music-making with young people they created a teaching centre, workshop, multi-layered orchestral school extending from children's bands and wind groups to a large symphony orchestra, which has always aimed to nurture musicians of the future. It pursues a real mission, resulting in thousands of youngsters and families forming a love of serious music. This school is “a powerful community whose activities span time and space”, says Zoltán Kocsis. Former students love to return to make music, to teach or just to hear a concert. The institution today is a paragon of musical education, preserving and spreading knowledge and experience gained over the past four decades, nurturing the “Stephen” tradition, standing strong amid the storms of cultural life just like an oak tree. Its “canopy” is the Zugló Philharmonic, supported since 2006 by the local Zugló district council, a professional orchestra directed by conductor Kálmán Záborszky, an exceptionally versatile, fresh and youthful symphony orchestra, admittance to which is a real status symbol for students. Artists such as Ferencsik, Kobayashi, Vásáry or Simonov, and in recent years Kocsis, have worked with them. They have toured Europe and are regular summer guests at the historic Lake Balaton town of Tihany. They have also launched the popular Pastorale series of family concerts. At their concerts, I always feel the ensemble is more than an orchestra. It has an unparalleled aura: when you recognise it, you see into its daily life and it sweeps you along and it never lets go. It’s no wonder that the Zugló Philharmonic has its own legendarily faithful audience. Whether it is their subscription series at the Palace of Arts or the Liszt Academy, they are always guaranteed a full house. The ensemble was awarded the Hungarian Heritage Prize (2000) and the title of National Youth Orchestra (2011). It can be proud of the last sixty years. The number of its rings is growing, its roots secure, its canopy ever denser. Márton Devich

TUESDAY 16 SEPTEMBER / 19.30

WEDNESDAY 17 SEPTEMBER / 19.30

THURSDAY 18 SEPTEMBER / 19.30

GRAND HALL

MVM CONCERTS – THE PIANO YEVGENY SUDBIN PIANO RECITAL DANUBIA ORCHESTRA ÓBUDA VÁSÁRY – HELL AND HEAVEN Ferenc Liszt: Sonata in B minor Faust Symphony Péter Balczó (tenor) Honvéd Male Choir Danubia Orchestra Óbuda Conductor: Tamás Vásáry What does Liszt’s Faust Symphony have to do with the Sonata in B minor? This question was raised as far back as the 19th century: if Liszt has a Dante Sonata and Dante Symphony, why shouldn’t the Sonata in B minor be interpreted as a ‘twin’ of the Faust Symphony, that is, a ‘Faust Sonata’? After all, the composition, which combines the four-movement sonata genre and the singlemovement sonata, forms an expansive vision and brings out the same characters from the density of the various themes which also characterise the movements of Liszt’s Faust Symphony. Kossuth Prize laureate Tamás Vásáry draws out this musical and intellectual linkage, revealing in what ways heaven and hell (which play an important role in the Faust story) appear in the long-established genre of symphony and piano sonata. Tickets: HUF 2 700, 3 500, 4 200, 4 900 Organizer: Óbudai Danubia Nonprofit Ltd. 12

SOAVE – PIANO CONCERT OF WORKS BY FERENC LISZT IN AID OF THE HUNGARIAN HOSPICE FOUNDATION Ferenc Liszt: Les Préludes Mazeppa From the Cradle to the Grave Dante sonata Gretchen (from Faust Symphony) Edit Klukon, Róza Radnóti, Jenő Jandó, István Lantos, Dezső Ránki, Fülöp Ránki (piano) Alaine Polcz established the Hungarian Hospice Foundation in 1991. Over the past nearly quarter of a century this organization has looked after numerous people suffering from incurable diseases, ensuring their final days are lived out with dignity. The programme of the piano concert, the initiative of Edit Klukon and Dezső Ránki, selects from among the many works of Ferenc Liszt that implicitly examine mortality and its various aspects philosophical, spiritual and theological. The artist couple are joined by two professors of the Liszt Academy, Jenő Jandó and István Lantos, along with two exceptionally talented young artists, Róza Radnóti and Fülöp Ránki. Tickets: HUF 2 900, 4 100, 5 200, 6 500 Sponsor Tickets: HUF 11 900 Organizer: Hungarian Hospice Foundation

D. Scarlatti: Sonatas (excerpts) Beethoven: Six Bagatelles, op. 126 Chopin: Nocturne in C sharp minor, op. 27/1 Chopin: Mazurka in B flat minor, op. 24/4, Scriabin: Mazurka in E minor, op. 25/3 Prokofiev: Sonata No. 7 in B flat major, op. 83 The name Yevgeny Sudbin, the 34-year-old Russian-born artist resident in London, is not well known to Hungarian audiences. However, he enjoys considerable recognition in Germany, the UK and USA. Many critics consider him as following in the footsteps of the great Russian school of pianists, but he himself, who was just ten when his parents emigrated to Germany, and was sixteen when he moved on his own to London, does not believe in national categories: he holds a cosmopolitan outlook on life. His taste in music is broad and the programme assembled for Budapest shows off his range of technique. He is attracted to eccentric geniuses such as Domenico Scarlatti from the 18th century and Alexander Scriabin from the early 20th century, as well as atypical works like Beethoven’s enigmatic Six Bagatelles. Of his generation, he is considered to be one of the greatest exponents of Chopin; although he doesn’t deny his influences (Evgeny Kissin and Grigori Sokolov are his two role models). Closing the concert, he’ll play the Prokofiev sonata, and this is certain to be a revelation. Tickets: HUF 3 000, 4 000, 5 000, 6 000, 8 000 Organizer: Jakobi Ltd.

MAKING THE FLEETING MOMENT ETERNAL In a photograph on his home page, he stands on the river bank of a neglected grey industrial city: turtle neck, long coat, check-trousers, burning gaze. He is slim and tall, his hands in pockets as though observing a distant boat. A disillusioned Russian anarchist from the beginning of the last century? An existentialist philosopher confronting the reality that there are no answers to his questions? A revolutionary in the final hours before he redeems the world? Yevgeny Sudbin is thirty-four years old. He was born in St Petersburg and currently lives in London. He has no revolutionary plans, he is not disillusioned by anything and he knows that to ask is more important than neurotically insisting on answers. That he would become a pianist was never in doubt: his mother and father were both pianists; his sister also plays. He does not recognise the terms indifference or boredom. He was ten when he moved to Berlin with his parents, sixteen when he moved alone to London. The critics regard him as a representative of the Great Russian piano school, but for him there is no meaning in this label. Work has meaning. When he made his recording of sonatas by the eccentric 18th century genius Domenico Scarlatti, he prepared by playing all of them – more than five hundred – to select those which truly felt closest to him. He champions Scriabin, Rachmaninov and their slightly less well known contemporary Nikolai Medtner. He has made over ten records for the BIS lable because unlike many of his contemporaries he is positively attracted to the genre of recording. “I like making records” he said in an interview. “In a live performance, things can be much more powerfully influenced. Often I sense that people are not getting what I want to give them. A recording makes permanence possible. In a performance, I try to create this permanence.” He likes to make not only recordings but also photographs. As a hobby photographer he aims to make the fleeting moment eternal as he does as a pianist. And although his recordings are truly astounding, Sudbin is also one of those suggestive performers who are able to leave an indelible memory on concert-hall audiences as well. If we were to look at any of his concert performances with the sound off (although it is hard to think of a more idiotic thing to do!) we would not be able to imagine the elemental power concealed in his exceptionally long fingers. He does not believe in spectacle. He believes in what is heard. And through the notes, the world can be changed. Which is to say, in his own modest manner, Sudbin is a redeemer, or at least someone who improves the world. Certainly for those who have heard him playing the piano. JEVGENYIJ SZUGYBIN © MARK HARRISON

Gergely Fazekas 13

PEKKA KUUSISTO (10 JUNE 2014) © LISZT ACADEMY / BALÁZS MOHAI

STEVE REICH (12 NOVEMBER 2013) © LISZT ACADEMY / GÁBOR FEJÉR

EVGENI KOROLIOV AND ANDRÁS KELLER (18 JANUARY 2014) © CONCERTO BUDAPEST / GÁBOR FEJÉR 14

CHICK COREA (13 MAY 2014) © JUDIT MARJAI 15

SATURDAY 20 SEPTEMBER / 18.00

SUNDAY 21 SEPTEMBER / 19.30

GRAND HALL

PURE BAROQUE HOLLAND BAROQUE SOCIETY Johann Sebastian Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 (BWV 1047) Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 (BWV 1048) Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 (BWV 1049) Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 (BWV 1050) Holland Baroque Society Conductor: Francesco Corti (harpsichord)

FINALS OF THE 1ST INTERNATIONAL ÉVA MARTON SINGING COMPETITION MÁV Symphony Orchestra Conductor: Ádám Medveczky The Liszt Academy has hosted numerous competitions in the last hundred years but the International Éva Marton Singing Competition is the first to be organized by the institution itself. More than 130 singers from thirty countries applied for the competition (with prize money of €42 000) founded by the former head of department and professor emerita of the Liszt Academy. Besides attracting major interest from China, Japan, South Korea, Romania, Poland, Russia and Ukraine, applications have come forth from Iran to Nigeria, the United States to Australia, the Philippines to Israel, as well as from twenty European countries. The exciting moment when the first prize is presented by Éva Marton at the final is open to the general public. Tickets: HUF 1 200, 1 700, 2 200, 2 500 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre 16

Formed by four musicians in 2005, the Holland Baroque Society give around 60 concerts a year and are ranked as one of the most innovative of early music formations. The ensemble is totally at home in the music of the 17–18th centuries and they have worked together with the greats of early music such as Emma Kirkby, Rachel Podger, Alexis Kossenko and Matthew Halls. Several of their undertakings have caused an outcry among more conservative circles. One such was their highly popular album ‘Old, New & Blue’ laid down in partnership with jazz trumpeter Eric Vloeimans. Others were recitals staged this spring, during which they lined up the music of Jacques Brel and Jean-Philippe Rameau side by side. They arrive at the Liszt Academy with a pure Baroque programme, overseen this time around by the 30-year-old Italian keyboard phenomenon Francesco Corti, the regular partner of Mark Minkowski and Jordi Savall. Their performance of four of the Brandenburg Concertos will be all you need to convince you that Bach was far from being a dour, bewigged cantor of the 18th century but a contemporary of ours. Tickets: HUF 1 900, 3 100, 4 300, 5 400 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre, Dutch Cloud Festival

HOLLAND BAROQUE SOCIETY © WOUTER JANSEN

THE BASTIONS OF THE GLOBAL TALENT INDUSTRY The Geneva-based World Federation of International Music Competitions accounts for nearly one hundred and twenty major international classical music competitions and several hundred smaller ones. This global organisation was founded in 1957 and its members offer competitions for instrumental musicians, singers, conductors, composers and musicologists aged thirty-five or under, to launch their careers. The Wall Street Journal estimates that the competition market which spans the continents is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. These competitions represent one of the possible starting points for artistic careers. Competitions are now part of the global talent industry, even though they are criticised by many for their one-sided demands and criteria that stress skills and abilities which perhaps are not always relevant for the stage. Terry Teachout, writing in the Wall Street Journal, argued that the great majority of the many hundred prize winners burn out and never enjoy a major career. But he also acknowledges that many major names such as Elena Obraztsova and Zoltán Kocsis did indeed make their mark in competitions. The collapse of the record industry and the global market tendencies towards concert life, if anything have raised the importance of competitions, the professional standards of which – and not just for members – is guaranteed by the World Federation of International Music Competitions, in terms of both the composition of juries, the competition material (repertoire) and the way they are organised (in several rounds.) Others argue that show business is getting the upper hand in classical music competitions. A researcher at University College London, Chia-Jung Tsay, published a study in 2013 in which she asserted that spectacle is frequently more important than musical achievement. In the course of experiments published in the scientific journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, musical professionals and amateurs were able to recognise the winners of classical music competitions on looks alone. Participants asked to choose between visual material and sound recordings decisively chose recordings, thinking this would be a better guide to the winner. Interestingly, non-musicians almost invariably failed to guess the winners from the sound recording alone, but on the basis of pure visuals they nearly always spotted the winner. Indeed, the results were similar for classically trained musicians. Tamás Vajna

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION ON A GLOBAL NOTE Fifty opera singers from thirty countries have entered the first major competition organised by the Liszt Academy, the First International Éva Marton Singing Competition, held from September 14 to 21, 2014.

“The Liszt Academy's first international competition emerges as a powerful brand because it is linked to the name of Éva Marton. When an institution and a country possess such a treasure, it would be foolish not to make use of it,” the government's commissioner for classical music, the former president of the Liszt Academy and patron of the competition, Dr András Batta, said when the competition was announced in autumn 2013. On the basis of the uploaded videos, the selection jury led by Éva Marton assessed the entrants and as a result of the preliminary judging, 77 singers were selected for the first round to be held on September 16 and 17, 2014. The Hungarian government is giving its full support to the competition. Its chief patron is Hungary’s president, Áder János. The jury is chaired by Éva Marton. She is joined by distinguished figures from the world of opera: celebrated mezzo-soprano Elena Obraztsova; tenor Vittorio Terranova; Sabino Lenoci, a professional music writer who is a founder of the Italian competitions L'Opera Award and the Musical Award as well as an artistic director of several festivals; Miguel Lerín, one of European opera's most influential managers; Pål C. Moe, producer and casting manager of the Glyndebourne Festival; Peter Mario Katona, Director of Casting of the Royal Opera House; Szilveszter Ókovács, Director of the Hungarian Opera House; and conductor Balázs Kocsár. Of course no one can predict who’s going to win, but there’s already a recognisable winner: the Liszt Academy, staging its own international competition for the very first time, has attracted world attention. “I will only use the word success after the prize-giving gala concert”, said Éva Marton with a note of caution but barely concealed pride. “I am delighted that for the first time the name of Éva Marton, the Liszt Academy and Budapest have attracted so much serious interest. It is difficult for us to compete with the distinguished Glyndebourne competition or the Viñas competition that is being staged for the fiftieth time this year, but I believe that we have successfully laid the foundations and that it will have a glorious future. The professor emeritus of the Liszt Academy emphasised.

16 SEPTEMBER 2014 14.00; 19.00, SOLTI HALL PRELIMINARY I. INTERNATIONAL

17 SEPTEMBER 2014 14.00; 19.00, SOLTI HALL PRELIMINARY 18 SEPTEMBER 2014 15.00; 19.00, SOLTI HALL SEMI-FINAL

PRESENTED BY

BUDAPEST 15-21 SEPTEMBER 2014

20 SEPTEMBER 2014 18.00, GRAND HALL FINAL 21 SEPTEMBER 2014 19.00 HUNGARIAN STATE OPERA AWARD CEREMONY AND GALA CONCERT

MONDAY 22 SEPTEMBER / 19.00

TUESDAY 23 SEPTEMBER / 19.00

WEDNESDAY 24 SEPTEMBER / 19.30

GRAND HALL

HOMMAGE À GYÖRGY LÁNG HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL CONCERT ISTVÁN LAJKÓ PIANO RECITAL DLA DOCTORAL CONCERT Ligeti: Musica Ricercata Beethoven: Six Bagatelles, op. 126 Einojuhani Rautavaara: Sonata No. 2, op. 64 (‘The Fire Sermon’) Scriabin: Two poems, op. 32 Scriabin: Two poems, op. 63 Scriabin: Piano Concerto in F sharp minor, op. 20 István Lajkó (piano) Symphony Orchestra composed of Liszt Academy students Conductor: Zoltán Kocsis István Lajkó a Prima Junior laureate, has won several major competitions, most recently first prize and another three prizes at the 2013 International Liszt-Bartók-Ligeti Piano Competition organized in Sofia. Yet these are the least important facts about him. What’s more important to know is that he is one of the most sensitive, intellectual pianists of his generation. The first half of his DLA doctoral concert features Beethoven’s enigmatic late Bagatelles, György Ligeti’s Musica ricercata series composed in Budapest between 1951-1953, and distinguished Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Sonata No. 2 (1970) with energy worthy of its name (‘The Fire Sermon’). The second half of the concert is devoted to Alexander Scriabin. This singular genius is particularly important for István Lajkó, who wrote his doctoral thesis on Vladimir Sofronitsky, the greatest performer of Scriabin of the 20th century. Free tickets for the concert can be requested from the ticket office of Liszt Academy Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre 20

Miklós Radnóti: Fragments György Láng: Concerto Ebraico Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 in D minor, op. 125

HELEN DONATH & MÁV SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Wagner: Mastersingers of Nuremburg – overture Puccini: Arias Liszt: Faust Symphony Helen Donath (soprano) MÁV Symphony Orchestra Conductor: Péter Csaba One of Herbert von Karajan’s favourite singers, who appeared at the Salzburg Festival as Pamina in 1967, is a true legend. She has appeared at all the major opera houses of the world, from the Vienna Staatsoper and Milan Scala through London’s Covent Garden to the New York Metropolitan, but she is also open to historically informed performance. Her list of conductor partners speaks for itself: Sawallisch, Kubelík, Doráti, Bernstein, Solti, Barenboim, Muti, Mehta and Harnoncurt, Rilling, just to mention a few. MÁV Symphony Orchestra and their principal conductor of the past two years, Péter Csaba – who had a distinguished career as a violinist – partner her in a selection of the most popular Puccini arias, Wagner’s astounding polyphonic conjuring trick, the overture to Mastersingers of Nuremburg, and a key Liszt work, the Faust Symphony. Tickets: HUF 3 000, 3 500, 4 000 Organizer: MÁV Symphony Orchestra

Eszter Zemlényi (soprano); Eszter Balogh (alto); Jenő Dékán (tenor); András Kiss (baritone); Vilmos Szabadi (violin); Ervin Fenyő (poem); Alba Regia Choir (choir master: Imre Kneifel); Primavera Choir (choir master: Ottília Horányi) Vilmos Szabadi (violin); Ervin Fenyő (verse) Alba Regia Orchestra Conductor: Béla Drahos Several generations in Hungary grew up with the music-novels of György Láng, but only a few know that he was an active composer, too, and he studied in the Liszt Academy class of Zoltán Kodály. During the Second World War, as a Jew, he was deported to Mauthausen concentration camp, but he survived the war. His principal work as a composer is the Concerto Ebraico for violin, which he wrote in his head while in the camp. In his memoirs he writes: “In 1942, on a winter’s night, the long train clanked somewhere in the lost wilds. Suddenly, in the dark wagon, a humming began: the Hebrew carol Él sónó habó. It resounded with increasing strength, a roaring, jubilant rhythm drowning out the clatter of the wheels, the war and the death they thundered towards...” This tune was the inspiration for the violin concerto. The rediscovery of the work is thanks to Béla Drahos, leader of the Alba Regia Orchestra for the past 15 years. Tickets: HUF 3 000, 4 500, 6 000 Organizer: Alba Regia Zeneművészeti Egyesület

THURSDAY 25 SEPTEMBER / 19.00

THURSDAY 25 SEPTEMBER / 19.30

SOLTI HALL

GRAND HALL

ACOUSTIC, AUTHENTIC GÁZSA & ÜSZTÜRÜ Guest: Erika Demeter (vocals) Gázsa Ensemble: István Papp Gázsa (violin); Péter Árendás (viola); Róbert Liber (double bass, gardon); Dániel Szabó (dulcimer) Üsztürü Ensemble: István Moldován Horváth, Levente István Major (violin); József Árpád Szász (viola, dulcimer); Lőrinc Szász (double bass)

GÁZSA ENSEMBLE © ANNA BAÁSZ SZŰCS

“Forked stake used for drying hay and grain, which is stuck into the earth in meadows, and on which hay and grain are piled to air and dry.” This is how the Ethnographical Encyclopaedia defines ‘üsztürü’, which of course in the early 21st century requires reformulation because for many the word refers to a folk orchestra, and more specifically the Transylvanian ensemble established in 1992, which set itself the following goal: “to seek and to experience that entirety characteristic of regional communities by the gliding with every stroke of horse hair on copper strings”. On this evening the group that is so important in the Transylvania dance house movement share the stage with Gázsa, whose first violinist, István Gázsa Papp, set the Transylvania dance house movement on its way with others in 1977. “I am the grandson of Sándor Gázsa,” is how István Papp introduced himself several times on his song-collecting tours, because his grandfather was called gázsa (gádzsó – the Gypsy word for nongypsies) by the Magyarszovát Gypsies when they ribbed each other. The name Gázsa is now inextricably linked to István Papp and his ensemble formed in Budapest in 1993. Tickets: HUF 1 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

RIVKA GOLANI & BUDAFOK DOHNÁNYI ORCHESTRA Tchaikovsky: Francesca da Rimini, op. 32 Máté Hollós: Double Concerto for Viola, Piano and Orchestra (world première) Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D major, op. 73 Rivka Golani (viola) Emese Virág (piano) Budafok Dohnányi Orchestra Conductor: Yeruham Scharovsky The media calls Rivka Golani the “queen of the viola”, BBC Magazine voted her one of the 200 greatest instrumentalists ever; she has had more than 300 works dedicated to her, and she has left an indelible mark on the annals of viola technique. Partnering Golani is the Liszt Prize winning pianist Emese Virág and the Budafok Symphony Orchestra conducted by Yeruham Scharovsky, who is similarly of Israeli origin and chief conductor of the Brazil Symphony Orchestra. Máté Hollós’s Double Concerto will take its place in between two classical masterpieces, Tchaikovsky’s symphonic poem composed after Dante, and the second symphony by Brahms. Tickets: HUF 3 200, 3 900, 4 500 Organizer: Budafok Dohnányi Orchestra 21

FRIDAY 26 SEPTEMBER / 19.30

GRAND HALL

SATURDAY 27 SEPTEMBER / 19.30 SUNDAY 28 SEPTEMBER / 19.30

GRAND HALL

BEYOND MUSIC… TAMÁS VÁSÁRY MUSICAL CONVERSATIONS Works by Frédéric Chopin Yvette Mondok (soprano) MR Symphony Orchestra Conductor, piano and narrator: Tamás Vásáry Tamás Vásáry plays the piano, conducts and talks about music. Anyone who has ever attended such an event will know it’s not easy to decide which the greatest or most elemental experience is. This time the Kossuth Prize artist examines Frédéric Chopin, the lonely genius and poet of the piano who was brilliant at improvisation and a deliberate composer. Naturally, as the title suggests, Vásáry always goes beyond the music because, as he puts it, “what interests me most in this life is where we come from and where we are going. What is the significance behind phenomena? In music, what is behind the notes and where did it come from? What is that intangible intellectual wellspring from which music and all artistic creation derive? 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. When I teach – I give master classes – I try to get across that anyone who wants to play music must seek their own inspiration: their own being.” Tickets: HUF 2 000, 3 000, 4 000 Students and concessions: HUF 1 400, 2 100, 2 800 Organizer: MR Music Ensembles 22

AKIKO SUWANAI & CONCERTO BUDAPEST Witold Lutoslawski: Funeral Music (Hommage à Béla Bartók) Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor, op. 64 Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 in E minor, op. 64 Akiko Suwanai (violin) Concerto Budapest Conductor: András Keller Audiences have become accustomed to finding Concerto Budapest, resident orchestra of the Liszt Academy whose chief conductor is András Keller, inviting a world star to virtually every concert, and this occasion is no different. Mendelssohn’s immortal Violin Concerto in E minor is performed by Akiko Suwanai, who in 1990 and 18 years old, won the International Tchaikovsky Competition, the youngest violinist in the history of the contest. Having studied in Tokyo, New York and Berlin, the artist now performs on one of the most famous violins in the world: the 1714 Dolphin Stradivarius, which was once owned by Jascha Heifetz. Akiko Suwanai uses the instrument with the permission of the Nippon Music Foundation. Of course, the tones of this marvellous instrument in the hands of a master performer are just one of the many attractions of the concert since, besides Mendelssohn's work, the programme includes what is perhaps Tchaikovsky’s most ‘Beethovenlike’ work, Symphony No. 5 performed under the baton of András Keller as well as the moving Funeral Music by Witold Lutoslawski, composed on the death of Béla Bartók. Tickets: HUF 3 300, 4 800, 6 500 Organizer: Concerto Budapest

AKIKO SUWANAI © LESLIE KEE

DISPLACE © MILÁN RÁCMOLNÁR 23

TOWARDS NEW DIMENSIONS “We play from the heart,” says director of the Concerto Budapest Orchestra, András Keller. This is presumably why so many happily turn up to their concerts. Because, as Richard Strauss said about earlier greats, the audience – particularly in larger groups – embody “the voice of God”, which is to say they sense what comes from the heart and reaches the heart.

The atmosphere of Concerto Budapest concerts strikes the listener first and foremost. And this atmosphere is also present in rehearsals and during workshop activities: the musicians love what they are doing. András Keller's flame-like energy, his tireless creativity at the head of the orchestra, his implacable insistence on musical quality – not at all dictatorial but attained as the acknowledger of a common ethos – infects the musicians. The spirit is youthful, even amid the “old foxes” of the orchestra (when they play in Concerto Budapest). And this is especially true of the youngsters, some of whom are Liszt Academy students, students of a kind of non-professional orchestral academy, who entered the Academy but signed up for the Concerto Budapest to take lessons from András Keller. The Concerto Budapest is the Liszt Academy's resident orchestra. And hence an old dream has been realised. Here is an ensemble which embodies all the noblest traditions of the Liszt Academy. And with each concert conquers with this sometimes waxing, sometimes waning ideal: through it, the spirit of the Liszt school can be experienced by the concert audience. By the same token, the ensemble itself is a school which is available to the most truly gifted young musicians. Concerto Budapest: an open orchestra in several senses. Open in the realm of repertoire, bravely leading us to unaccustomed musical lands and open to contemporary music. There is barely another orchestra in Hungary which plays this repertoire more naturally or with greater dedication. Concerto's door stands open to all the leading performers who we really must hear. We have to hear them because they are our shared treasures (Andrea Rost, Zoltán Rácz, Gergely Bogányi, Gábor Boldoczki) and we have to hear them because they are original leading international figures (Lera Auerbach, Thomas Adès), whose artistry we need like a fresh spring. And who would not want to hear Steven Isserlis, or the newcomer Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili? Concerto Budapest is like an octopus which extends its feelers into all areas of age, temperament and interest, and succeeds in gripping everyone (it offers more than eight types of subscription series, and not just for the Liszt Academy or Palace of Arts but provides its own programme for BMC as well!). The relationships between the music they play are hugely appealing: Bach and Shostakovich, Schubert and Mahler, Brahms and Gubaidulina … It is an exciting path – to use the title of one of its series – moving towards “new dimensions.” The Concerto Budapest is path-breaking. It is worth following in their tracks. András Batta

ENTRIES IN THE GUESTBOOK OF LISZT ACADEMY ISABELLE FAUST (8 DECEMBER 2013)

MONDAY 29 SEPTEMBER / 19.30

TUESDAY 30 SEPTEMBER / 19.30

GRAND HALL

ACOUSTIC, AUTHENTIC VUJICSICS 40

Péter Háry (cello) Zugló Philharmonics Budapest Conductor: Zoltán Kocsis

Vujicsics Ensemble: Mihály Borbély (wind instruments); Miroszláv Brczán; Áron Eredics; Gábor Eredics (tambura); Kálmán Eredics (double bass); Ferenc Szendrődi (tambura); Balázs Vizeli (violin) Guests: Barnabás Kelemen, Katalin Kokas (violin) & Söndörgő ensemble: Attila Buzás (double bass, bass tambura, litárka); Áron Eredics (primtambura); Benjámin Eredics (tambura); Dávid Eredics (recorder, saxophone, tambura); Salamon Eredics (accordion, tambura) Host: András Batta

“Now I would like to give back as much as I can of what I picked up over time. I think it is important to give the defining impulses to budding young artists, because these days it’s far harder to start out on a career in the right direction than it was in my time.” These are the words of Zoltán Kocsis when, on the occasion of a joint concert with the Zugló Philharmonics Budapest, he was asked about his relationship to the younger generation. Once again in September he passes over to the ensemble (awarded the title National Youth Orchestra three years ago) some of what he has “picked up”. He leads the orchestra in a recital of the fourth Brahms symphony closing with the captivating chaconne movement, and the Dvořák cello concerto that was much admired by Brahms. The first cellist of the orchestra, Péter Háry, will be the soloist for the latter work.

Tihamér Vujicsics – composer, music ethnographer and one-man national institution, sparkling eyed, Bohemian big-hearted magician of music – was born into a Serbian family in Pomáz 85 years ago. His folk-music achievements are carried forward by the popular Vujicsics band formed 40 years ago. Not merely an ensemble, Vujicsics are also a creative and educational workshop, and they play an important role in preserving the musical consciousness of Serbian and Croatian communities in Hungary. Members of the ensemble are woven into the fabric of primary, intermediate and advanced-level music teaching in Hungary and they have multiple associations with the Liszt Academy, too. Their celebratory concert is based on the Serbian collections of Béla Bartók, and they intend to draw attention to the connections between classical and folk traditions.

Tickets: HUF 1 900, 2 100, 2 500 Organizer: Zugló Philharmonics Budapest

Tickets: HUF 1 900, 3 100, 4 300, 5 400 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

ZOLTÁN KOCSIS AND ZUGLÓ PHILHARMONICS BUDAPEST Dvořák: Cello Concerto in B minor, op. 104 Brahms: Symphony No. 4 in E minor, op. 98

VUJICSICS © RÓBERT LÁSZLÓ BÁCSI

VUJICSICS The Vujicsics group began their career in 1974 as one of the leading figures of the burgeoning Táncház (dance house) movement, and initially performed a variety of different styles of folk music. Then influenced by Tihamér Vujcsics, they began to concentrate on the Serbian music that was performed in the area where they lived. With this as their starting point, they naturally broadened their interests to Croatian and other Balkan folk MUSICAL styles. Since then, the Vujicsics Group have taken the music of the ethnic Serbian and Croatian musicians living in Hungary and now play southern Slavic folk music. The bulk of their repertoire is drawn from the collections of Tihamér Vujicsics, Béla Bartók and their own discoveries.

It is mentioned too rarely that the great revival in Hungarian instrumental music that occurred in the 1970s saw musicians interested not just in delineating the traditions within the borders of Hungary: they were also open to relationships outside Hungary between the different areas, ethnic groups and archaic music. Thanks to the Vujicsics Group, the popularity of Balkan music (as the archaic music of Europe) was shared by other > Hungarian groups. Some flirt with it, others try to perform it in its original form, but it is still present in one guise or another. Some have worked with it because of its most archaic forms, by which I mean the richness of its asymmetrical rhythms, the myriad variations of bagpipe sonority, the refreshing beauty of the marvellous small-compass melodies. There is no question, though, that the most popular among these different formations and styles is the music of the tambura groups. What this demonstrates is that only a select group of cognoscenti are interested in the archaic music, and most people equipped with modern ears are more receptive to simple functional polyphony. The tambura was probably introduced to the region by the Turks, which in modern times led to tambura bands, following the examples of Hungarian Gypsy groups. Their popularity remained unchecked. It became fashionable all over Hungary. It is the elegant classical performance of tambura band music that sets Vujcsics apart from other groups. Its members are experienced in a variety of other musical styles (classical music, jazz), creating a unique fusion of popular dance house music and stage production with tautly composed, art-music effects. (It could be argued that the dynamic range is alien to authentic folk music, but who cares when the music makes such an impact: I would argue that it functions as Vujcsics Ensemble's own contemporary music.) It is relatively rare for a band to be able to work together for forty straight years. It is proof of wondrous human and professional harmony that part of this activity has been to nurture successors and give fatherly support. The Söndörgő group who are poking out their heads from under their gowns are linked by not just family strands but by their spirit and professional sophistication. Ferenc Sebő

ANOUSHKA The name Shankar resonates all over the globe. Anoushka, the only member of the family to inherit the musical style of her father, Pt Ravi Shankar, has conquered the concert halls both with her sitar playing and her outstanding world music recordings. This is how Anoushka recalls her beginnings in music: “My father didn’t want to teach me at any cost, worrying that the traditional system of tuition would place too much pressure on me and sour our relationship. On the other hand, my mother strongly encouraged me to sing, and since she said that I could give it up whenever I wanted, I gave this a chance as well.”

Sitar player Pt Ravi Shankar began teaching his daughter Anoushka the sitar when she was seven. After turning thirteen, father and daughter gave their first concert together at the Siri Fort auditorium in New Delhi. From this moment, she was a constant accompanist and performer at her father's concerts. In India it is considered that being on stage is an important step in the process of learning music: the would-be performer experiences what it is when a hundred eyes and ears pay attention to them. But the musician also learns how to handle the emotional waves of the audience. Indian classical music is built upon the atmosphere created jointly by the audience and the performer. Anoushka learned her craft so quickly that at the age of sixteen she was offered her first record contract from Angel Records (EMI). Her 1998 debut album Anoushka was followed in 2000 by Anourag, and in 2003 a singular situation emerged when she and her father were nominated for a Grammy while her half-sister Norah Jones, was also nominated (albeit in a different category.) With her album Live at Carnegie Hall Anoushka became the youngest ever performer to be nominated for a Grammy in the world music category. After this she worked with such performers as Sting, Lenny Kravitz and the Thievery Corporation, flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal, violin virtuoso Joshua Bell and also jazz pianist Herbie Hancock. It is clear from that list that Anoushka is at home in a number of musical genres and does not shrink from placing the world of traditional Indian melody into that of modern electronics and Western tempered music. This latter is not so simple because Indian music uses a different system of intervals to welltempered Western music, and indeed the intervals of some ragas also depart completely from the natural semi-tonal system as well. This of course does not mean that Indian music is out of tune. As with most ancient musical cultures, Indian musicians realised that microtones give clearer emphasis to the pure notes and make the emotions created by certain intervals more unambiguous. Because according to Indian tradition, music is a language like speech, but while speech is for expressing thoughts, music is for communicating feelings. With eight discs behind her, Anoushka Shankar experimented in 2011 with the fusion of flamenco and Hindustani music in her album Traveller, in which she showed the common roots of European Gypsy and Indian music to her audience. She herself wrote about it: “This record was not a folk music research study; I was much more interested how these ancient cultural relationships could be embodied in the music of the present.” The universal music language which Anoushka Shankar has discovered feeds not only on the most ancient musical traditions of humanity, but placing them into a new form, also reveals them to the listener. Anoushka Shankar is a true storyteller whose personality shines through the instruments and musical styles she plays with. Szabolcs Tóth

ANOUSHKA SHANKAR © YUVAL HEN / DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON

WEDNESDAY 1 OCTOBER / 19.30

THURSDAY 2 OCTOBER / 19.30

FRIDAY 3 OCTOBER / 19.00

GRAND HALL

SOLTI HALL

FISCHER ANNIE 100 THE NEXT GENERATION

CHAMBER MUSIC, SO CLOSE ERNŐ KÁLLAI & JÁNOS BALÁZS C. Schumann: Three Romances, op. 22 Beethoven: Sonata in A major, op. 47 (‘Kreutzer’) Paganini: 24 Caprices, op. 1 (excerpts) Liszt: Paganini Etudes Milstein: Paganiniana Paganini: La Campanella Ernő Kállai (violin) János Balázs (piano)

ANOUSHKA SHANKAR CLASSICAL INDIAN RAGAS Anoushka Shankar (sitar) Tanmoy Bose (tabla) Ravichandra Kulur (bansuri flute) Pirashanna Thevarajah (mridangam) Sanjeev Shankar (shehnai – tanpura)

“I practice 4-5 hours a day! If I don’t go completely mad, you will discover an artist in me. What a person, what a violin, what an artist! My God, how much suffering, how much misery, what torment in these four strings!” Ferenc Liszt wrote these lines to one of his students in 1832 after hearing Niccoló Paganini’s demonic violin playing in Paris. This experience forced the 20-year-old Liszt to rethink his piano technique and his whole life. The Hungarian went on to write piano arrangements of a few of Paganini’s legendary violin works, the Caprices. Now two Junior Prima young virtuosi, Ernő Kállai, discovered by Itzhak Perlman, and János Balázs, following in the footsteps of György Cziffra, reveal exactly what Liszt went through when heard Paganini: after the interval, Liszt’s Paganini etudes are paired with the original caprices. The first part of the concert features the beautiful Romances of Clara Schumann, who was also overwhelmed by the Paganini experience, and one of the apogees of the classical chamber repertoire, Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata.

One gets the feeling that the charismatic Anoushka Shankar plays with the gods, or at the very least does not shy away from challenges. Her father, Ravi Shankar, was a legend in her life, since he had a major impact not only on 20th century Indian traditions but Western art music, jazz and popular genres, too. Time has proven Anoushka correct in her decision – or the decision of the gods – to follow in the footsteps of her father and become a sitar artist. Ravi Shankar once wrote: “I am waiting for the time when I will be known as Anoushka’s father… Anoushka has a rare talent … there is something spiritual in the way she plays … she feels the music and gives into it.” She gave her first concert in Hungary at the Liszt Academy just prior to its renovation, and one critic later wrote that her father’s wish had been fulfilled: Ravi is now ‘only’ Anoushka’s father. Six years later, the audience can expect a genuine spiritual experience in the new Liszt Academy as one of the greatest sitar artists today guides listeners into the empire of classical Indian ragas.

Tickets: HUF 1 400, 2 100, 3 500, 4 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Tickets: HUF 3 700, 5 100, 6 500, 7 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Schubert: Sheperd on the Rock (D. 965) Rodrigo: Concierto de Aranjuez – 2nd movement Kodály: Songs Scriabin: Fantasia in B minor, op. 28 Weiner: Peregi recruiting dance Bartók: Three Folksongs from Csík (BB 45b) Bartók: Rumanian Folk Dances (BB 68) Albéniz: Córdoba, op. 232/4 De Falla: First dance from the opera “Short Life” Ravel: Alborada del gracioso Takemitsu: Voice Bartók: Contrasts (BB 116) Orsolya Ambrus (soprano) Máté Fülep (baritone) Péter Horváth (clarinet) Dávid Simon (flute) Orsolya Márton (violin) Miklós Környei (guitar) Anastasia Razvalyaeva (harp) Erzsébet Kerek, Krisztina Taraszova, János Palojtay (piano) The Annie Fischer Scholarship for performance artists under the age of thirty was established on the initiative of the legendary opera singer Adrienne Csengery sixteen years ago by the then Ministry of Education and Culture. In the course of her long life Annie Fischer always considered it vital to support young talent, and now her alma mater pays tribute to the artist with a mini festival made up of three concerts. Winners of this year’s Annie Fischer Scholarship are introduced to the public; they are our hopes for the future, the cream of their generation, spiritual heirs of Annie’s legacy. Tickets: HUF 1 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

SATURDAY 4 OCTOBER / 19.00

SUNDAY 5 OCTOBER / 11.00

SOLTI HALL

GRAND HALL

FISCHER ANNIE 100 THE COLLEAGUES Brahms: Variations on a Theme of Paganini, op. 35 Schumann: Frauenliebe, Frauenlebe, op. 42 Dohnányi: Cascades, op. 41/4 Chopin: Grande valse brillante, op. 18 Liszt: Il sospiro Chopin: Preludes, op. 28 (excerpts) Schumann: Piano Quartet in E flat major, op. 47 Katalin Szutrély (soprano); Ilona Prunyi, Tünde Csoba, Csilla Varga, Kálmán Dráfi (piano); Péter Somogyi (violin); György Konrád (viola); Marcell Vámos (cello)

LISZT KIDZ ACADEMY THE PIANO FOR 10-15-YEAR-OLDS Balázs Fülei, Kálmán Oláh (piano) Storyteller: Balázs Fülei

UNDERSTANDING MUSIC BUDAFOK DOHNÁNYI ORCHESTRA GLOBAL CITIZENS OF HUNGARIAN MUSIC: ANNIE FISCHER Bartók: Piano Concerto No. 3 (BB 127)) Budafok Dohnányi Orchestra Narrator and conductor: Gábor Hollerung Balázs Demény (piano)

In the second concert in the mini festival organized by the Liszt Academy commemorating Annie Fischer, who was born 100 years ago, colleagues, friends and students of the magical ‘Aunt Annie’ commemorate one of the 20th century’s major pianists. Honorary granddaughter Katalin Szutrély, Ilona Prunyi, one of her closest friends in the final years, Tünde Csoba and Csilla Varga, two private students whom she also considered her friends, Kálmán Dráfi, present head of the piano department, also an ex-private student and their chamber partners select from the vast repertoire of Annie Fischer.

To what uses can you put a black box on several legs with 88 ivory keys, the same number of strings and tiny hammers, not to mention a huge soundboard? It’s pretty good as a base for a vase of flowers and you can build a great bunker underneath it, but we’ll be more interested what it can do in music. The series Liszt Kidz Academy for 10-15-year-old school kids (as well as parents, grandparents and great grandparents) not only reveals the workings of the piano but also how they use or used the instrument in classical music and jazz. Two teachers of the Liszt Academy, Junior Prima winner Balázs Fülei, and Liszt Prize winner Kálmán Oláh, showcase their favourite instrument.

The Budafok Dohnányi Orchestra’s ‘Understanding Music’ series has proved highly popular with Budapest audiences. These matinee concerts represent the highest standard of a genre that has a particular tradition in Hungary: popularizing and disseminating information about music. During the performances the orchestra director introduces the audience to some of the greatest works of music. On this occasion the spotlight is turned on one of the favourite pieces by legendary pianist Annie Fischer, born 100 years ago this year: Bartók’s final completed composition (give or take a few bars), the Piano Concerto No. 3 dedicated to Ditta Pásztory

Tickets: HUF 1 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Tickets: HUF 1 600 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Tickets: HUF 1 900, 2 300, 2 700 Organizer: Budafok Dohnányi Orchestra 31

A SPARKLING SKY AT THE LISZT ACADEMY The one hundredth anniversary of the birth of the great Hungarian pianist Annie Fischer is an ideal opportunity for us to remember her personality as well as her artistic greatness. This aspect of Annie Fischer is not as obscure today as it was during her life. For Annie Fischer was repelled by the expectations of the popular press. She neither gave interviews nor appeared before the camera. For this reason, strange legends about her circulated even in her lifetime. But she appeared largely unconcerned. Following her death, the reminiscences of friends and contemporaries inevitably became public. These also sharply refute the rumours that she was a recluse and shrank from human contact. She did not reject friends, only the notion of a public private life. Everyone who knew her talks with respect and nearly always with the greatest enthusiasm. I would like to recall two of my own memories which bear witness to Annie Fischer's generosity of spirit. The legendary singing teacher István Ungár taught at the Kölcsey Secondary School in the seventies. His father, István Ungár, was one of Annie Fischer's best friends and their families knew each other from long before. Under the guidance of István Ungár, the small choir of the Kölcsey School to which I belonged attended the funeral of Annie Fischer's much respected mother. As to what we produced as a choir, memory has perhaps been rightfully wiped clean, but then the news arrived that Annie Fischer wanted to express her thanks by visiting our school and giving a concert to the students. Two classrooms opened up into one another, serving as the Communist Youth Club, and since this was both the largest and only public space of the building, they somehow managed to cram into it the enormous concert piano. Annie Fischer gave a marvellous and perhaps even more inspired Beethoven recital than she had done at the Liszt Academy. In the last year of her life, she often mentioned she would prefer to only play in schools to entirely untrained and unprejudiced children, with no pre-announced programmes. She also added that if the state were to build a new college for young talented musicians (which it never did) then she would help carry the bricks. The second memory is not just about Annie Fischer but the importance of István Ungár as a teacher because there are not many teachers who would go to the trouble of giving each of his students a considerable present. As I learned much later, our teacher made a single phone call to Annie Fischer, briefly mentioning his two students to whom he wanted to give a memorable gift. Annie Fischer did not query it but lugged her tape recorder into the Grand Hall of the Liszt Academy, and on the occasion of a solo rehearsal, recorded two late Beethoven sonatas, enclosed them in a box with a charming dedication and sent them as a matriculation present. The other recipient of this gift was Dorottya Fábián, also a music historian who now lives in 32

SVIATOSLAV RICHTER AND ANNIE FISCHER (1985) © GÁBOR FEJÉR

A SPARKLING SKY AT THE LISZT ACADEMY

Australia. Professor Ungár wished through this gesture (it would seem successfully) to offer us encouragement to join the profession. Besides personal gifts and memories, it is naturally important to recall what Annie Fischer's artistry offered to those who were present at her concerts. This, though, is a pretty hopeless enterprise since the ever dwindling number of witnesses may recall their impressions, moods and even concrete musical moments, but they can only express them in words, and for youngsters this can seem like empty nostalgia. There remain her recordings. Of the dubious glories of the 20th century, one of the least open to dispute is that through sound recordings an artist today can cement his place among the immortals. Neither artists nor we ourselves are always convinced of the enjoyment value of conserved music. Bartók thought it was nothing more than a surrogate. Others, for example Glenn Gould, came to acknowledge it as the only valid form of music making. Annie Fischer wasn’t a fan of recordings. She expressly loathed studio work because she never felt she could offer full value there. While she was never unconditionally happy about it, she did sometimes allow her concerts to be recorded. I think she rightly thought that these perhaps offered a truer reflection of her artistic habits. But what else can posterity do to recall and acquaint themselves with earlier artists except on the basis of recordings? Certainly the musical power of the great musicians, their personality and artistic achievements permeate their recordings as well. And this is no different when it comes to Annie Fischer. And her performances of some works have never been surpassed. Performances can be good in a different way but what she did with certain Beethoven or Schubert movements and Mozart concertos is not just beautiful but one can never tire of them. They contain some inexplicable individual extra. There is no doubt that the elemental dynamism of the young artists emerging in the late sixties and early seventies, who found the new in everything they touched, awoke in Annie Fischer the impatience that one generation tends to feel for another, but today, with the passage of half a century, we can say that the values of Annie Fischer's art have stood the test of time. In the slow funeral-march movement of Chopin's Piano Sonata in B flat minor there is a central section in D flat major. It is just 24 bars long, and with repeats, no more than three minutes of music. Once at the Liszt Academy when Annie Fischer reached this passage it was as if the roof of the Liszt Academy had been silently lifted and above it the starry sky sparkled and we felt that gravity had stopped, everyone was just floating together outside of time and space. Somehow every tangible musical parameter, rhythm, tone colour, everything had changed but there was no rational explanation. There is only one word for this, however exhausted: magic. There is no recording of it. It doesn't matter because Bartók was right – it would merely be a surrogate. My recollection, for those who were not there, is just empty nostalgia. But I have put it into words because I want to indicate that however rare, these types of experience do exist. It is worth waiting for them and to seek them out, too. At Annie Fischer's concerts – to express myself in prosaic modern terms – such things occurred with significant regularity.

János Mácsai

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SUNDAY 5 OCTOBER / 19.00

SUNDAY 5 OCTOBER / 19.30

SOLTI HALL

GRAND HALL

TALENT OBLIGE ERZSÉBET SELELJO SAXOPHONE SONATAS Creston: Sonata Hindemith: Sonata Albright: Sonata Denisov: Sonata Mihály Borbély: Sonata (world première)

Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major (K. 453) Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, op. 21 Péter Frankl, Tamás Vásáry (piano) Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra (artistic director: János Rolla)

“May the artist of the future set his goal within, and not without, himself; may virtuosity be a means and not an end for him; and may he never forget that though the saying is Noblesse oblige, still more than nobility–Génie oblige!” Thus wrote Ferenc Liszt about Paganini in 1840, and he himself was an example to posterity of what talent demands of an artist – sharing talent with the world above all else. The series “Talent Oblige” of the Liszt Academy Concert Centre provides the opportunity for several students or ensembles of the Liszt Academy to share their talent every half year. During the autumn semester Erzsébet Seleljo, former student of the London Royal College of Music and Vienna Konservatorium Privatuniversität, who is a doctoral student of the Liszt Academy, performs with her sister, Irén Seleljo, who accompanies her on the piano. The young saxophonist who has collected prizes at several competitions has put together a programme from the classic saxophone repertoire of the 20th century, including a world première by Mihály Borbély.

“Officially, Annie Fischer was not a professor of the Liszt Academy; she taught from the stage. We respect her as our master and we would certainly like to do something with the precious heritage she gave us – to pass it on to the rising generation of talents and make it a part of their career.” This is how former president of the Liszt Academy András Batta, speaking last year, formulated what considerations lie behind the academy concert series paying tribute to the 100th anniversary of the birth of Annie Fischer. The one-time student of Ernő Dohnányi and Arnold Székely exploded into the public consciousness in 1933, at the age of 19, when – perhaps to her greatest surprise – she won the International Ferenc Liszt Piano Competition. This was followed by a glittering career in which her fellow artists played an important role, among them two young pianists, Péter Frankl and Tamás Vásáry, with whom she developed a particularly close relationship. These two evoke the presence of Annie Fischer, together with the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra, which played with the artist on numerous occasions.

Tickets: HUF 1 600 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Tickets: HUF 2 900, 4 100, 5 200, 6 500 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Erzsébet Seleljo (saxophone) Irén Seleljo (piano)

ERZSÉBET SELELJO & IRÉN

ORCHESTRA IN THE CENTRE ANNIE FISCHER 100 PÉTER FRANKL & TAMÁS VÁSÁRY

MONDAY 6 OCTOBER / 19.30

TUESDAY 7 OCTOBER / 19.30

THURSDAY 9 OCTOBER / 19.30

GRAND HALL

In Praise of Civil Courage KARL JENKINS–JÁNOS ARANY: THE BARDS OF WALES

Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, op. 55 (‘Eroica’) Karl Jenkins–János Arany: The Bards of Wales Ingrid Kertesi (soprano); Rhys Meirion (tenor); Zsolt Haja (baritone) Debrecen Kodály Chorus; Ensemble Jean-Philippe Rameau; MÁV Symphony Orchestra Conductor: Gergely Kesselyák Welsh-born Karl Jenkins (70), who, together with his jazz-rock band Nucleus won the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1970, has always worked on the fringes of classical music, jazz and world music. His activity as a classical composer received new impetus in the 1990s, and today he is considered the most performed British composer. In 2011, at the request of concert impresario László Irinyi, he wrote a large-scale cantata to János Arany’s ballad The Bards of Wales. “I wanted to compose a work in which I could depict, using the tools of music, the desire for freedom of small nations that are rightly proud of their traditions, language and heritage,” Jenkins said in an interview. After its world première in the Palace of Arts, the production started out on a world tour, which garnered plaudits, in the Carnegie Hall this January, and now it is the turn of the Liszt Academy, in a performance that brings together selected soloists and choruses as well as the MÁV Symphony Orchestra and Gergely Kesselyák on the conductor’s podium. Tickets: HUF 1 900, 2 900, 3 900, 4 900, 5 900 Organizer: CMI – Concert Masters International

GAVRIEL LIPKIND & THE FRANZ LISZT CHAMBER ORCHESTRA Elgar: Prelude and Allegro, op. 47 Schumann: Cello Concerto in A minor, op. 129 (arrangement for string orchestra) Bruch: Kol Nidrei, op. 47 (arrangement for string orchestra) Schubert–Mahler: String Quartet in D minor (D.810 – ‘Der Tod und das Mädchen’) Gavriel Lipkind (cello) Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra (artistic director: János Rolla) Cellist Gavriel Lipkind, born into an Israeli Russian immigrant family, currently lives in Germany. He studied in Tel Aviv, Frankfurt and Boston, has worked together with Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Pinchas Zukerman and Yehudi Menuhin, has worked with some of the greatest orchestras and holds master classes around the world. For this performance he will play two works with the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra: Schumann’s classic Cello Concerto in A minor, in a rarely performed arrangement for string orchestra written in the 19th century, and Max Bruch’s Kol Nidrei, composed to Hebrew melodies. These two works are complemented by a virtuosic orchestral composition by Edward Elgar and one of the finest pieces in the oeuvre of Schubert, the String Quartet in D minor (in the string orchestral version by Gustav Mahler). Tickets: HUF 2 600, 4 500, 6 900, 8 900 Organizer: Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra

JAZZ IT! KÁLMÁN OLÁH EUROPEAN-AMERICAN QUINTET Kálmán Oláh (piano) Gerard Presencer (trumpet) Andy Middleton (saxophone) Darryl Hall (bass) Esteve Pi Ventura (drums) An English trumpeter, an American saxophonist and bass player, a Spanish drummer and a Hungarian pianist – professor of the Liszt Academy Jazz Department and Liszt Prize winner Kálmán Oláh has put together an all-star cast for this concert. Each is one of the best on his instrument, and they have never played together in this formation before. The guests have one more thing in common: all are great admirers of the work of Kálmán Oláh, including his numerous compositions standing at the frontier of jazz and classical music. In fact, the Hungarian won the Thelonious Monk Institute’s Composers Competition Winner in 2006. So the show is founded on compositions by Kálmán Oláh, but there will be plenty of jazz standards thrown in for good measure. Tickets: HUF 1 400, 2 100, 3 500, 4 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre 37

THURSDAY 9 OCTOBER / 19.00

FRIDAY 10 OCTOBER / 19.00

SOLTI HALL

OLD ACADEMY OF MUSIC C. P. E. BACH 300 ENSEMBLE MIMAGE+ CHAMBER MUSIC AT THE COURT OF FREDERICK THE GREAT

ARMEL OPERA COMPETITION 2014 EMBERS

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Trio Sonata in G major (Wq 153) Violin Sonata in D major (Wq 71) Trio Sonata in B minor (Wq 143) Violin Sonata in C minor (Wq 78) Trio Sonata in D minor (Wq 145)

Marco Tutino: Embers Henrik: Tamás Altorjay Konrad: Jean-Philippe Biojout Director: Gabriel Lavia Conductor: Sándor Gyüdi The Armel Opera Competition and Festival reaches back to the operatic practices of earlier centuries in that singers with the finest voices and acting abilities are invited to perform in specific productions. After all, Monteverdi, Händel, Mozart and Rossini did not think in terms of abstract roles but real life singers. The Armel jury auditioning in several parts of the world seeks out the most appropriate candidates for two lead roles in opera productions from five different countries. This is the first time that the Liszt Academy is hosting two chamber operas in the festival broadcast by ARTE / ARTE Concert, Mezzo and Duna TV. On the first evening, the audience of the Sir Georg Solti Chamber Hall are presented with a work by Marco Tutino (60), known as an experienced opera composer and ranked among the Italian neo-romantic composers. The opera Embers bases itself on the novel of the same name by Sándor Márai. The two friends who become rivals in love are played by bass singer with the Szeged National Theatre Tamás Altorjay, the only Hungarian qualifier at last year’s Armel competition, and Frenchman Jean-Philippe Biojout, who is equally active as a writer, editor and singer. Tickets: HUF 1 900, 2 600 Organizer: Armel Production & Press Nonprofit Ltd. 38

ARMEL OPERA COMPETITION 2014 FIGARO¿ Christian Henking: Figaro¿ Susanna: Marion Grange Director: Andreas Zimmermann Conductor: Jürg Henneberger Busybody barber Figaro, Beaumarchais’s immortal figure who has been brought to life on the opera stage by so many composers – Mozart, Paisiello, Rossini, Milhaud – was rethought by the Swiss composer Christian Henking in a hilarious comedy. The music of his opera buffa literally rethinks the operatic tradition associated with Figaro, it cites virtually every related work and stylistically it encompasses almost everything from classical music avantgarde to hip-hop. The joint production of the theatre of Bienne in Switzerland and the Armel Opera Competition and Festival was presented in Switzerland this spring, to great acclaim. Now, the lead female role for the performance in the Liszt Academy’s Sir Georg Solti Chamber Hall is taken by Marion Grange, one of the rising stars on the French opera scene; the director is Andreas Zimmermann who is active both as theatre director and actor. Tickets: HUF 1 900, 2 600 Organizer: Armel Production & Press Nonprofit Ltd.

Márta Ábrahám (violin); János Bálint (flute); Miklós Spányi (harpsichord); György Schweigert (double bass); “There is in it something highly original. It has a special dynamism. He wrote extremely animated, vitamin C movements, packed with energy, that differ from the Baroque norm and even Mozart’s dynamism.” Miklós Spányi said this about the music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in an interview on the 300 th anniversary of the birth of the genius. Miklós Spányi, who teaches at the College of Music in Mannheim, the Conservatory in Amsterdam and the Budapest Liszt Academy, is approaching the end of recording a series (more than 40 albums for BIS Records) of works by the most talented of Johann Sebastian Bach’s sons. In 2011 he founded the Ensemble MiMaGe with violinist Márta Ábrahám and double-bass player György Schweigert, and they are sometimes joined by flutist János Bálint, as on this occasion. The opening concert of the Liszt Academy Concert Centre-organized C. P. E. Bach weekend gives a cross-section of the sonatas of the Bach boy: those very works that the composer’s patron Frederick the Great of Prussia enjoyed playing when he wanted to escape the intrigues of court life. Tickets: HUF 1 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

ILLÉS ALLEY © LENKE SZILÁGYI

FRIDAY 10 OCTOBER / 19.00

SATURDAY 11 OCTOBER / 15.30

SATURDAY 11 OCTOBER / 19.00

GRAND HALL

SOLTI HALL C. P. E. BACH 300 CONCERTO ARMONICO BUDAPEST “GROSSES HOFKONZERT” FESTIVE CONCERT AT THE COURT OF FREDERICK THE GREAT

MÁV SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Johannes Brahms: Hungarian Dance No. 1 in G minor Hungarian Dance No. 3 in F major Hungarian Dance No. 10 in F major Double Concerto in A minor, op. 102 Symphony No. 4 in E minor, op. 98 Andreas Buschatz (violin) Meehae Ryo (cello) MÁV Symphony Orchestra Conductor: Péter Csaba “I would like to give you certain news of an artistic nature, and I trust that you will be more or less interested in it.” This quotation is from a letter written by Johannes Brahms to his estranged friend and legendary violinist József Joachim in summer 1887, informing him that he was writing a double concerto for violin and cello. Many critics consider the composition, which re-established their friendship, a summation of the Brahms oeuvre: it is not only the soloists who extend their hands to each other, but the symphonic and concerto forms, too. The work is performed by one of the finest South Korean cellists of our day, the Juilliardtrained Meehae Ryo, and concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic, Andreas Buschatz, as partner of the MÁV Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Péter Csaba. This pure Brahms-evening also features three Hungarian dances, and after the intermission, Symphony No. 4, composed just a few years before the double concerto. Tickets: HUF 3 000, 3 500, 4 000 Organizer: MÁV Symphony Orchestra 40

ZUGLÓ PHILHARMONICS BUDAPEST Vivaldi: The Four Seasons, op. 8/1-4 J. S. Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F major (BWV 1047) J. S. Bach: Mass in G minor (BWV 235) Gyula Stuller (violin); Péter Villányi (oboe); Balázs Winkler (trumpet) Ildikó Gaál-Wéber (alto); János Szerekován (tenor); Zsolt Oláh (bass) Zugló Philharmonics Budapest – King Stephen Symphony Orchestra and Oratorio Choir (artistic director: Kálmán Záborszky) Conductor: Gábor Horváth

Benda: Violin Concerto in D major (L2.2) Schale: Harpsichord Concerto in C minor C. P. E. Bach: Flute Concerto in D major (Wq 13) Márta Ábrahám (violin); János Bálint (flute); Miklós Spányi (harpsichord) Concerto Armonico Budapest (concert master: Márta Ábrahám, artistic director: Miklós Spányi)

In this Baroque recital by the Zugló Philharmonics Budapest Gyula Stuller (who trained at the Liszt Academy and Guildhall School of Music and Drama and is a one-time student of György Pauk and an assistant professor to Tibor Varga and now lives and works in Switzerland) performs Vivaldi’s all-time favourite violin concerto. Baroque concertos that are even better known than Vivaldi’s Four Seasons are few and far between, but perhaps one cycle is the Brandenburg Concertos which reveals strong Vivaldi influences. Gyula Stuller performs the second concerto together with soloists of the Zugló Philharmonics Budapest, followed after the intermission by the G minor work from the four “short masses” by Bach. Conductor for the evening is Gábor Horváth who is awarded his DLA this year.

“Festive Concert at the Court of Frederick the Great” is the title of the second concert in the C. P. E. Bach weekend organized by the Liszt Academy Concert Centre, featuring Concerto Armonico under the artistic directorship of Miklós Spányi. The programme includes three concertos, one for violin, one for harpsichord and one for flute, by three seminal 18th century composers of the so-called ‘Berlin school’. The Czech Franz Benda, one of the most significant violinists of the period, was taken on to the court of the Prussian king at the age of 24, where he worked until his death. In 1735, Christian Friedrich Schale was appointed court musician in Berlin (as cellist and chamber musician), but he was also a talented keyboard player and gained a post as organist in Berlin Cathedral. C. P. E. Bach stood out from the magnificently rich music life of the court of Frederick the Great, and although primarily considered a composer for keyboard instruments, he could not avoid occasionally writing flute compositions for Frederick the Great, an accomplished flautist.

Tickets: HUF 1 900, 2 100, 2 500 Organizer: Zugló Philharmonics Budapest

Tickets: HUF 1 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

SUNDAY 12 OCTOBER / 16.00

SUNDAY 12 OCTOBER / 19.30

SOLTI HALL

GRAND HALL

ORCHESTRA IN THE CENTRE LÁSZLÓ FENYŐ & THE NEW HUNGARIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA C. P. E. BACH 300 CONCERTO ARMONICO BUDAPEST KEYBOARD DUEL C. P. E. Bach: Harpsichord Concerto in C major (Wq 20) Miklós Spányi: New Composition for Harpsichord and Strings (première) C. P. E. Bach: Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Fortepiano in E flat major (Wq 47)

Haydn: Divertimento in C major (Hob. II:C9, ‘Quintet concertant’) Haydn: Cello Concerto in D major (Hob. VIIb:2) Schubert–Mahler: String Quartet in D minor (D. 810 – "Der Tod und das Mädchen") László Fenyő (cello) Hungarian Chamber Orchestra (artistic director: Béla Bánfalvi)

In a world of globalized fast food restaurants and uniform Steinway pianos we tend to forget that there were times, for instance, the 18 th century, when keyboard players could select from a far richer storeroom of instruments of various types, constructions, tones and styles. The C. P. E. Bach weekend organized by the Liszt Academy Concert Centre, which pays tribute to the most talented Bach son born 300 years ago, closes with a concert offering some genuine curiosities. The programme features a harpsichord concerto by C. P. E. Bach followed by a new work (albeit in 18 th century style) by Miklós Spányi, artistic director of Concerto Armonico Budapest, and, to wind up the programme, C. P. E. Bach’s double concerto for fortepiano and harpsichord. Liszt Academy professor András Kemenes will be Miklós Spányi’s musical partner in this rare keyboard duel.

When in 2004 he won the Kronberg International Pablo Casals Cello Competition, it became clear that László Fenyő was one of the finest cellists of his generation. In 2005 he was awarded the Liszt Prize and, three years later, the Junior Prima Prize. Naturally, concert invitations also flooded in, from London’s Wigmore Hall to Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and several from the Far East. László Fenyő began his studies in the department for especially talented artists of the Liszt Academy, and he is currently head of department at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe. This evening, he takes to the stage of his alma mater as partner of the Hungarian Chamber Orchestra, formed three years ago under the artistic direction of Béla Bánfalvi. The authenticity of the piece Fenyő will perform, Haydn’s Cello Concerto in D major, among the most attractive pieces in the cello repertoire, has been debated by musicologists despite textual analysis giving every indication that Haydn wrote it. Besides, the material itself signals that its creator was certainly not a ‘minor master’.

Tickets: HUF 1 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Tickets: HUF 1 400, 2 100, 3 500, 4 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Miklós Spányi (harpsichord), András Kemenes (fortepiano) Concerto Armonico Budapest (concert master: Márta Ábrahám, artistic director: Miklós Spányi)

LÁSZLÓ FENYŐ

“STOP BEING CLEVER AND JUST PLAY MY MUSIC!” The second weekend of October at the Liszt Academy is devoted to the music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach who was born three hundred years ago. Miklós Spányi and the artists of Concerto Armonico Budapest will be dedicating three concerts to the son of Johann Sebastian, who enjoyed the greatest career among the Bachsons. C. P. E. Bach kindly agreed to give an exclusive interview to the Liszt Academy Concert Magazine.

What was it like to grow up as the son of Johann Sebastian Bach? I guessed that would be your first question. Why can't I be interviewed in my own right and not just because I am (or was) the son of the ”great Johann Sebastian”? Well, obviously it wasn't easy. We had our conflicts but who doesn't with their father? But of all my brothers, I think I really understood clearest just how much he did for us. If needed, he would write audition pieces for our job interviews and he always paid great attention to our careers. It was partly because of us that he moved to Leipzig so we could study at the university, an opportunity denied to him. He hated the city though. What was the relationship like between the Bach sons? I have always felt that the first-born, Wilhelm Friedemann was my father's favourite. Perhaps that was my good fortune because in the end I became more successful while my elder brother frittered his life away. Where talent is concerned, Friedemann could possibly have enjoyed an even better career than I did. My other two composer brothers were much younger than me: I was at university when Christoph Friedrich and Johann Christian were born. After our father died, Johann Christian lived with me for five years in Berlin and that is where he wrote his first compositions. Then he moved to Italy, converted to Catholicism and changed his style. In a way, I'm glad father never lived to hear these superficial, diluted Italianate works. Can you tell us something about the time spent in the court of Frederick the Great?

CARL PHILIPP EMANUEL BACH 42

I was twenty-four when I went there and, fifty-four when I moved on to Hamburg. I met my wife in Berlin where my children were born – it was an important period of my life. I have to acknowledge that there were some superb musicians working in Frederick's court: the Graun and Benda brothers, and the King's favourite flautist Johann Joachim Quantz. At the beginning I was overjoyed to have a secure post, but after a while, it bothered me that I was only getting 300 tallers a year like the other musicians while the King's favourite Quantz was on 2000 a year. Other things annoyed me: after a while, the King's monotonous musical taste became boring and I can't deny he was never an easy personality. He was an eccentric figure, sensitive, talented and contradictory. You couldn't talk about it in those days but more than 200 years later I think I can now say that King was attracted to other men, which caused a lot of difficulties in his youth. When he ran away from his music-loathing, military-mad father Frederick William with his lover, a military officer called Katte, they were both imprisoned and his father ordered Katte to be executed

in front of Frederick. From then on, his most faithful partner was his flute, which he called his ”Principessa” and he played it every day. How did you become the director of music in Hamburg? By the 1760s, I was pretty well known across Europe through my published works. When my godfather Telemann, director of music in Hamburg, passed away in 1767, I applied for the post and spent the remainder of my life responsible for the music of five churches. In the last decade of my life, I was regarded as the most important composer in Europe. Mozart wrote in a letter that ”Bach is the father and we are the children”, and he was thinking of you, not Johann Sebastian. I happen to know that this letter is a fake but Mozart could justly have claimed to have emerged from my shadow. All of them. An English admirer of mine wrote to the distinguished music historian Charles Burney in 1774 saying that he was suffering from the unique disease of ”Carlphilipemanuelbachomania!” History is a funny thing: audiences totally forgot about my father's music for decades after his death, while I became better known in Europe than he was at anytime during his life. Then after 1800, they rediscovered my father's music and forgot mine instead! Now on my 300th birthday, perhaps the record will be put straight. I am delighted to see just how much enthusiasm there is this year for my compositions. Of course, there are musicians for whom 2014 is not just Philip Emanuel Bach year, who have been au fait with my virtues for decades. For example Miklós Spányi, who teaches at your Liszt Academy. You know, I really regard him highly. I know very few keyboardists who understand my music as profoundly as he does. Are you a musicologist yourself? Yes. Then permit me to tell you something. And pass it on to your colleagues. It irritates me enormously that even now, many of you talk about me as if I represented a transitory period. As if I were the link between my father and Mozart. A transitory period? Have they not pondered the nature of time? What period is not transitory? As I wrote in my keyboard textbook, which I think is still valid today on my 300th birthday: the aim of music is to touch the heart. So stop being clever and just play and listen to my music! Gergely Fazekas

MONDAY 13 OCTOBER / 19.30

WEDNESDAY 15 OCTOBER / 19.30

FRIDAY 17 OCTOBER / 19.30

GRAND HALL

GRAND HALL POLISH-HUNGARIAN HARMONY 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE POLISH INSTITUTE IN BUDAPEST

CAFe BUDAPEST CONTEMPORARY ARTS FESTIVAL GROUP 180 35 YEARS Tibor Szemző: Skullbase Fracture Béla Faragó: Death of the Spider Béla Faragó: Grave Inscription István Márta: Christmas Day, lesson 24 László Melis: Songs of Maldoror Frederic Rzewski: Coming Together Frederic Rzewski: Attica Péter Forgács (narrator) Conductors: Tibor Szemző, László Melis, Béla Faragó, István Márta From the very beginning in 1979, Group 180’s musicians and composers constructively agitated the stagnant cultural years of the late Kádár era. The group, which enjoyed as much success in university clubs as it did at international festivals, functioned as the Hungarian flagship of minimalist music hallmarked by the Americans Steve Reich and Philipp Glass. Like most contemporary art riding against the mainstream, Group 180 also had its countercultural, political dimension. But just as important is the fact that it introduced to Hungary and popularized a musical world which had been hitherto obscured. Not only did the political regime collapse in 1990 but Group 180 also dispersed, leaving behind them three remarkable albums and the intellectual seeds of minimalism, which gave rise to its successes in Hungary around the turn of the millennium. The concert features excerpts from all three albums: compositions by members of the group as well as two key works by the American Frederic Rzewski, the politically charged Coming Together and Attica. Tickets: HUF 1 200, 1 900, 2 500 Organizers: Palace of Arts, Liszt Academy Concert Centre 44

HUNGARIAN NATIONAL PHILHARMONIC IN MEMORIAM ANNIE FISCHER Haydn: Symphony No. 95 in C minor Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor (K. 491) Mozart: Requiem (K. 626) Beatrix Fodor (soprano) Andrea Meláth (alto) Szabolcs Brickner (tenor) István Rácz (bass) Dezső Ránki (piano) Hungarian National Choir (choral director: Mátyás Antal) Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra Conductor: Zoltán Kocsis “I approach her with the greatest respect as a one-time idol of mine, because her concerts were a childhood experience that I remember to this day.” So said Zoltán Kocsis, speaking about Annie Fischer. And now Kocsis pays tribute to the legendary pianist born 100 years ago together with members of the Hungarian National Philharmonic. The concert commemorates Annie Fischer, who was so often the partner of the State Concert Orchestra (the Hungarian National Philharmonic’s predecessor) in performances, appropriately enough, of Mozart piano works. The dramatic concerto in C minor is performed by Dezső Ránki, who of all Hungary’s pianists perhaps most clearly espouses Annie Fischer’s ideals. It is performed after Haydn’s London Symphony in the same key and before Mozart’s Requiem. Tickets: HUF 3 000, 4 500, 6 000 Organizer: Hungarian National Philharmonic

Dohnányi: Konzertstück, op. 12 Panufnik: Piano Concerto Kilar: Krzesany Eszter Karasszon (cello) Mateusz Borowiak (piano); Symphony Orchestra of the Szymanowski Academy of Music, Katowice; Conductor: Michal Klauza The Polish Institute, working to deepen cultural ties between the two countries, celebrates the anniversary of its formation with a festive concert. The Symphony Orchestra of the Szymanowski Academy of Music, in Katowice, perform at the concert; this spring students of the Budapest Liszt Academy paid a visit to the Polish academy. Soloist for the opening Dohnányi work is Eszter Karasszon, student of the Liszt Academy and pupil of Csaba Onczay, while the solo of Andzrej Panufnik’s Piano Concerto is played by Mateusz Borowiak, who won third prize in the piano category of the 2013 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. Panufnik was one of the most significant figures of 20th century Polish music, who did much towards the restoration of music life in his homeland after the war and before he emigrated to the UK. In 1991, Sir Georg Solti wrote this about him after his death: “he was an important composer and first-rate conductor, a most excellent champion of the European traditions of music.” The final piece is the work for large orchestra of Wojciech Kilar who died nearly a year ago at the age of 81. Kilar was the leading figure of Polish avant-garde, but he gained fame as a film music composer, working with directors as Andrzej Wajda, Francis Ford Coppola and Roman Polanski. Tickets: HUF 1 200, 1 700, 2 200, 2 500 Organizers: Liszt Academy Concert Centre, Polish Institute in Budapest

GROUP 180 The well-informed gathered to their concerts like bees to A honeypot. These were like séances, in which several generations of opposition in the Kádár communist period, ingénues included, would fall into a mutual ecstasy. The basically German educated renegade intelligentsia encountered some non-canonical other at the Music Academy founded by Ferenc Liszt.

Only the initiated truly understood the musical essence of these legendary concerts: Group 180, formed in 1979, had the power of a rock ‘n’ roll band. The only equivalents to their concerts and artistic events at the Liszt Academy were the kinds of alternative performances found at the Young Artists' Club, suburban trade-union cultural halls, in abandoned chapels alongside Balaton, at house parties stuffed with philosophers and selected artists or at the University Stage. Group 180 included László Melis, Tibor Szemző, Béla Faragó, Péter Forgács, László Gőz, András Soós, Gellért Tihanyi, Ferenc Kovács, Tamás Bubnó, Ágnes Dobszay, Mihály Dresch, János Kálnai, Ferenc Körmendy, Éva Posvanecz, Klára Schnierer, Ferenc Simon, Kinga Székely, Tamás Tóth, D. László Vörös. Plus the minimalist music characterised by the likes of Steve Reich and Philip Glass (and of course Hungary's own composers: István Márta, Tibor Szemző, László Melis, András Soós and Béla Faragó.) They were not just famous in Hungary; they gave over four hundred concerts in Europe. They played at the 1981 Paris Autumn Festival, as well as the First Karlsruhe European Minimalist Music Festival, as well as at the Süddeutscher Rundfunk, the Hessischer Rundfunk, Radio France and ORF. They worked in person with Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Petr Kotik, Alvin Curran and Chris Newman. The group which functioned as an independent contemporary music workshop enjoyed the sympathy of the democratic opposition, similar to new wave bands such as Kontroll Csoport, Balaton or URH. Group 180's Petri night or the première of Frederic Rzewski's prison piece at the time of the Polish state of emergency, was equivalent to open street protests. “For academic music history, a rock 'n' roll number is ungraspable; they do not know what to do with it. The official concert policy, even to this day, is not willing to concede space to the musical avant-garde, which for me is evidence that the attitude of classical music history is no longer valid” said Tibor Szemző in a lengthy interview. But there is no question that this one decade, when Group 180 reigned supreme, was the last time that there was the tangible possibility for contemporary serious music to be able to break out from its Hungarian isolation. Tamás Vajna

GROUP 180 45

SATURDAY 18 OCTOBER / 19.00

FRIDAY 17 OCTOBER / 19.00 SUNDAY 19 OCTOBER / 19.00

SOLTI HALL

SOLTI HALL CAFe BUDAPEST CONTEMPORARY ARTS FESTIVAL SOUNDS OF SAPPORO AN EVENING OF CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE MUSIC

CAFe BUDAPEST CONTEMPORARY ARTS FESTIVAL LADY SARASHINA Péter Eötvös: Lady Sarashina

Takemitsu Toru: Masq Mieko Shiomi: Direction Music for a Pianist Hoshiya Takeo: For Harp and Violin Yagi Kozo: Resistance for Flute and Piano Minami Satoshi: From behind the songs Takemitsu Toru: Songs

Libretto: Mária Mezei, based on the 11th century diary of Lady Sarashina (English text: Ivan Morris) Singers: Imai Ayane, Makiko Yoshida (soprano); Eszter Zavaros (mezzo-soprano); Maurice Lenhard (baritone) Director and stage design: András Almási-Tóth Costumes: Krisztina Lisztopád Choreography: Eszter Lázár Featuring the augmented Budapest Strings (artistic director: Károly Botvay) and instrumental students of the Liszt Academy Conductor: Gergely Vajda The 70-year-old Péter Eötvös was always attracted to theatricals, including traditional concerts and even film music. He was only smitten by the world of opera, however, after the Lyon debut of his Three Sisters, based on the Chekov play in 1998. After Three Sisters Eötvös, who follows the practice of 17–18th century opera composers in that he mainly works to commission, immediately set about writing As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams, based on the diary of an 11th century Japanese lady. The personal

Kumiko Ittetsu, Wakako Kawasaki (soprano); Hisako Amagai, Shigeko Ibaraki (alto); Toshiaki Nakahara (baritone); Ryoko Asai, Yukie Sato, Yuki Takadono (flute); Hikaru Hayashi, Yasuko Hamashima (violin); István Balázs (cello); Anastasia Razvalyaeva (harp); Kayako Matsunaga, Akane Matsuda, Satoko Tanimoto (piano) Conductor: Takeo Hoshiya observations of the women known as Lady Sarashina are exciting not only for their historical significance but also for their literary value. As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams has been performed all over the world (it was played in 2001 at the Budapest Spring Festival, directed by András Almási-Tóth and conducted by Gergely Vajda), yet it did not take root in opera houses. So when the Lyon Opera House asked Eötvös to create a new work in 2007, together with co-writer and librettist Mária Mezei, he fashioned a genuine opera out of the original, dividing the story of this perceptive women into nine scenes. This is how Lady Sarashina came about, a work that up to now had been impossible to hear in Hungary even though it has garnered laurels both in France and Poland. Tickets: HUF 2 500 Organizers: Palace of Arts, Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Liszt Academy's relationships with Japan are very wide-ranging: for decades, Japanese students have been studying at the Academy and its teachers regularly work at Japanese universities. The institution nurtures a particularly close relationship with the city of Sapporo and the Otani University, and it is through this joint collaboration that this concert has been staged as part of the CAFe Budapest Contemporary Music Festival, offering a crosssection from Japan's contemporary music production. Chamber works and songs feature on the concert programme while the performers are students and teachers, both Japanese and Hungarian. Free tickets for the concert can be requested from the ticket office of Liszt Academy Organizers: Palace of Arts, Liszt Academy Concert Centre

INFINITE SUBTLETY AND CLARITY Peter Eötvös talks to the Portuguese composer, conductor and musicologist Pedro Amaral about the relationships between the 11th and 21st centuries, utopian idealism in the operatic genre and writing his opera Lady SARASHINA, which is to receive its first staging in Hungary.

How did you come across the diary of Lady Sarashina? Pretty much by accident. We were working on the second staging of my opera, Three Sisters at the Dusseldorf Opera where I was chatting with Timothy Coleman, who was then the dramaturg of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein. And I heard from him about this moving book which was written by a female courtier in the Imperial court in Heian in 11th century Japan. I have to say, what first made a tremendous impact on me was the way her descriptions of places, temples and countryside a thousand years ago chimed with my own memories and travels in these places where time stands still; we walked in a Kyoto garden, we entered a Buddhist temple and the environment was a carbon copy of what Lady Sarashina described. Of course there are human relationships which are very different to those we are accustomed to in our own culture; but the emotions which she describes are identical to those of modern people - the various shades of love, decorum, the idealisation of the person loved .. everything which a lonely and isolated lady talks about with miraculous naturalness, as though she were talking to us directly, telling us with infinite subtlety and clarity about her everyday impressions, reveries and recollections. And finally, I came across the same kind of world-weariness of my earlier Chekov work in such a different book in which there is very little real story, and when something finally does happen, it drowns in a kind of existential numbness. So in the end, while it is very different from The Three Sisters, I managed to create theatre which shares its awkward and delicate lack of drama. You first used Lady Sarashina's diary in your opera As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams. Why have you returned to it? As a practical person did you not know when you started writing As I crossed, opera houses were never going to vie with each other to stage it? Absolutely not! We have to imagine ourselves back in the time when I started this work in 1998. We had just premiered The Three Sisters and that was pretty much my only real experience of the professional world of opera. When I received a commission from the Donaueschingen for As I Crossed I believed the kind of theatre I was dreaming about could be created in its entirety and that I could later stage it across the world. Three Sisters had proven so succesful, so surely my new work would as well, since in my opinion it is much more original... Luckily I did not know what is now obvious, because this practical knowledge would have perhaps inhibited me from doing what I wanted. And since I do not see into the future, this amazing naivety opened up the path before me where I could be entirely myself at least once.

PÉTER EÖTVÖS © MARCO BORGGREVE

INFINITE SUBTLETY AND CL ARITY

Do you believe you inevitably have to renounce utopian ideals when writing opera? Difficult question. Certain utopian ideals stubbornly live on; indeed with time they overcome obstacles, others appear irretrievably limiting and perhaps can never be achieved. The utopian ideals of Bernd Alois Zimmermann, for example, envisage the audience surrounded by several simultaneous stages but it does not seem likely this could ever be realised; and if one day there was a successful production, it would not be on traditional stages, so in all likelihood this idea will never take wing. But there are other utopias – at least those in our own time – which have ultimately become common practice. The ultimate case being Wagner, who stretched all the boundaries with his use of stage, orchestra, forms, acoustics, architecture, and contributed to expanding the devices of opera, its spaces and habits. It is a slowly moving world, but it moves. Perhaps a work such as As I Crossed is not more utopian now than Rheingold was in its own time. Since what is unique in it? Its brevity, the amplified orchestra with reduced forces, solo instruments on stage, the non-singing human voice and everything being directed by the Klangregie, the sound engineer. No one sees into the future but we can ponder whether in a hundred years these characteristics still appear non-conformist… You always emphasise that every individual opera project must be characteristic and unique in its style, both in drama and music. How did you envisage Lady Sarashina when you started planning it? I quickly decided that Lady Sarashina, akin to As I Crossed, would be a sequence of scenes without interruption or breaks. The forty-one minutes of As I Crossed was not long enough: I imagined a slightly larger scale of performance, enough for a shortish evening performance. I was thinking of a kind of chamber opera, with a medium-sized orchestra and a small group of four singers: the lead character soprano playing Lady Sarashina and a trio comprising a second soprano, a mezzo and a baritone who create all the other roles – the princess, the young Sarashina, the nurse, the Empress, the father, the cat, the noble man and many others: a whole host of figures sung by the three versatile singers... … who like classical comedians, change masks during the course of performance? Yes or like the actors in Noh Theatre – the idea of mask has always been very important for me. But when I was planning Lady Sarashina, before even writing a single note of it, I decided it had to have one additional characteristic, making it unique in my oeuvre: I intended to write something that audiences of any age could watch, hear and appreciate, from small children to elderly, from 7 to 77! Pedro Amaral Extract from parlando rubato: conversations, monologues and other diversions, a volume of conversations between Péter Eötvös and Pedro Amaral, to be published in autumn 2014 by Rózsavölgyi & Co.

SUNDAY 19 OCTOBER / 19.30

TUESDAY 21 OCTOBER / 19.30

WEDNESDAY 22 OCTOBER / 19.30

GRAND HALL

CONCERTO BUDAPEST & UMZE CHAMBER ENSEMBLE

ON THE SPOT DEPARTMENT OF KEYBOARD AND CHORD INSTRUMENTS

Messiaen: Des canyons aux étoiles (Hungarian première) Fülöp Ránki (piano); Boglárka Fábry, Aurél Holló (percussion); Szabolcs Zempléni (french horn) Concerto Budapest, UMZE Chamber Ensemble Conductor: Zoltán Rácz

FESTIVE CONCERT MARKING THE 70TH BIRTHDAY OF PIANIST GYULA KISS

The name Olivier Messiaen is connected with perhaps the most remarkable oeuvre in 20th century music, huge both in the literal and in the metaphorical sense. Rationality and passion, profundity and banality are apparent in the musical concepts of Messiaen, and his works are, at the same time, refined and robust, mystical and sensuous. His approach can perhaps best be interpreted in the context of the medieval, religious mastercomposer than in any Romantic artistideal. In his mind, life after death was just as real as the various sound series he created, the riddle of prime numbers or the songs of birds that, as an avid ornithologist, he collected and systematized. The 12-movement, 90-minutelong Des canyons aux étoiles was commissioned by philanthropist Alice Tully in 1971 to mark the bicentenary of the declaration of American independence. The composition’s rich tonality, theological references and birdsong has never been performed in Hungary, thus Concerto Budapest and UMZE Chamber Ensemble, under the baton of Zoltán Rácz, are making up for a long-felt absence.

Schumann: Arabesque, op. 18 Schubert: Trio in B flat major (D. 898) Schubert: Piano Sonata in B flat major (D. 960)

Tickets: HUF 2 500, 3 000, 3 500 Organizers: Concerto Budapest, UMZE Chamber Ensemble

Tickets: HUF 3 900, 4 900, 7 900, 14 000 Organizer: Magyar Virtuózok Művészeti Nonprofit Kft.

Gyula Kiss (piano) Vilmos Szabadi (violin) Judit Faludi (cello) Gyula Kiss is professor of chamber music at the Liszt Academy and teacher of piano at the Weiner Leó Secondary School of Music. In a career spanning close on five decades, the 70-year-old Liszt Prize pianist has travelled to many countries as performer and teacher. He worked in Japan as guest professor at the Musashino University of Arts in the second half of the 1980s, and then in South Korea around the turn of the millennium. His artistic and pedagogical work includes more than ten albums, countless radio and television recordings, and prize-winning students. He performs Schumann’s Arabesques, Schubert’s final piano sonata and the pinnacle of the chamber music repertoire, Schubert’s trio in B flat major, in the company of Judit Faludi and Vilmos Szabadi.

Ferenc Liszt: Ballade in B minor Psalm No. 23 Tarantelle di bravura d'après la tarantelle de La muette de Portici Funerailles Hungarian Rhapsody No. 15 (Rákóczi March) – for piano four hands Vallée d’Obermann Sancta Dorothea Toccata La lugubre gondola No. 2 Concerto pathétique for two pianos Romance oubliée Andrea Vigh (harp); László Ernyei (accordion); János Balázs, Kálmán Dráfi, István Lantos, Sándor Falvai, Gábor Farkas, Domonkos Csabay (piano); András Szalai, Beáta Móri (dulcimer) The next production in the On the Spot series introducing the departments of the Liszt Academy gives a glimpse into the day-to-day happenings of the piano department founded by Liszt. The department’s modern name reveals a lot about how the institution has developed over the past 139 years. Headed by Kálmán Dráfi, it encompasses not only tuition for the piano but all sorts of chord instruments, including the harp, dulcimer, accordion and organ. The concert programme is made up exclusively of Liszt works, some better known than others, and the feature of the recital will be performances on harp and dulcimer as well as piano. Tickets: HUF 1 200, 1 700, 2 800, 3 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre 49

FRIDAY 24 OCTOBER / 19.45 SATURDAY 25 OCTOBER / 19.45

SUNDAY 26 OCTOBER / 19.30

GRAND HALL

DAVID LANG AT THE LISZT ACADEMY

BUDAPEST FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA Haydn: Symphony No. 39 in G minor Mozart: German Dances (K. 571) Vanhal: Double Bass Concerto in D major Rossini: Bassoon Concerto Mozart: Symphony No. 39 in E flat major (K. 543) Zsolt Fejérvári (double bass) Andrea Bressan (bassoon) Budapest Festival Orchestra Conductor: Gábor Takács-Nagy

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY © KLAUS RUDOLPH

This Budapest Festival Orchestra concert starring the double bass and bassoon is compulsory listening for enthusiasts of deep-note instruments. Contemporary of Mozart and Haydn, Johann Baptist Vanhal’s Double Bass Concerto (one of the most attractive works in the none-too-rich repertoire of solo compositions for this instrument) is performed by Zsolt Fejérvári, doublebass leader of BFO, while Rossini’s Bassoon Concerto is handled by Andrea Bressan, an Italian bassoonist with the orchestra. The two concertos are joined by three orchestral works: a rarely played piece by Haydn, the G minor symphony from the ‘Sturm und Drang’ period, one of Mozart’s dance series, works written for the ball season of 1789, and the popular Symphony No. 39 in E flat major, all under the baton of Gábor Takács-Nagy. Tickets: HUF 2 500, 3 500, 4 400, 6 300, 10 500 Organizer: Budapest Festival Orchestra

David Lang: The So-Called Laws of Nature The Little Match Girl Passion (Hungarian première) Aurél Holló, Zoltán Rácz, Gyula Lajhó, Dániel Janca (percussion); Katalin Károlyi, Judit Szathmáry, Márk Bubnó, Péter Tóth (vocal) Conductor: Zoltán Rácz “At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.” This remark of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s inspired the percussion work composed for So Percussion ensemble (2002) by David Lang, one of the most sought-after American composers of our day and a person who was originally destined for the natural sciences. Amadinda Percussion Ensemble debuted the piece in Hungary in 2006. In the second half the audience is served Lang’s 2008 Pulitzer Prize winning oratorio The Little Match Girl Passion for four singers (each playing percussion instruments). The work based on the Hans Andersen tale and extended with Biblical quotations, excerpts from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and his own additions is one of the most traumatic works in Lang’s oeuvre (and music of the new millennium). It tells the sad tale of the poor, rejected match girl and raises it to the same level of a human drama as the Jesus passion. Tickets: HUF 1 200, 1 700, 2 800, 3 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

DAVID LANG © PETER SERLING

TO IMPRESS, TO MOVE Hearing a children's song, a summer pop hit, an aria, a string quartet movement, the sound of the street or the song of a bird, feelings and emotions are aroused within us and we can be clear that we are encountering a composition. Unless we resonate emotionally to the refined structure of a piece of music, to its embracing creative power, to the creative attention paid to the smallest detail, to the thousand years of experience giving shape to sounds, in other words, to everything which raises the sequence of musical phenomena to the rank of “composition”, then the composer has been working in vain. “The essence of composition” says David Lang “is impact.”

There are some who feel that a Bach fugue is simply a contrapuntal display while others detect only a pale collection of formulae in a Mozart movement. But others will see the former as proof of God and an unsurpassably profound experience in the latter. One listener encounters compositions, another hears just notes. Impact is infinitely subjective. This sort of relativism is not a unique feature of post-modernism. We can quote an article from a German encyclopaedia published in the 1820s about compositions and composers. “Composition is the craft of making new works of music. To this belongs the mental talent for creating music, the knowledge of ordering a thesis and the practical treatment of instruments. Therefore, only those can call themselves composers who create works rich with spirit and feeling.” The Californian David Lang (1957) began his composition studies at Stanford where in 1976 he met Donald Martin Jenni (1937–2006), who arrived from Iowa University to substitute for a single semester. “He taught French music from the Middle Ages to Pierre Boulez. A unique, mysterious figure,” said Lang in his movingly beautiful remembrance about his professor. “I could never figure out where he was really from and when pressed he would tell amazing stories of traveling in Morocco or Eastern Europe or India. He had a strange and vaguely unrecognizable accent. Even his name was mysterious – at Stanford when I had met him he was called Donald Jenni, with the accent on the “Jen.” The next year when I went to Iowa everyone called him Martin Jenni with the accent on the “ni.” It seemed that people knew him differently in different worlds and places. It also seemed that changing his location was a part of changing himself. Each week we would look in depth at one piece or composer: Messe de Notre Dame, La Mer, Leonin's Magnus Liber, the Berlioz's Requiem, Solage, Fauré, Messiaen. His ability to subject even the most seemingly obvious musical materials to laser-like microscopic analysis was miraculous.” Jenni exerted a fundamental influence on Lang's musical thinking. And so when it came to choosing where to do his masters’ degree, there was no question that it would be with Jenni at Iowa University (1978–1980). “This was the golden age. Rare talents came together and we were taught by superb teachers, Richard Hervig, William Hibbard and Peter Todd Lewis. It was said that this university alone won as many BMI Student Prizes as all the other American universities combined. The teachers seemed to try to outdo each other with uniquely revelatory courses. I took a semesterlong analysis course with Hibbard on Pierrot Lunaire, for example. But the classes of Jenni's were the most wide-ranging: a semester on the 114 songs of Charles Ives; a semester on William Byrd's My Ladye Nevell's Booke; a semester on the piano music of Brahms. Ultimately it didn’t matter what subject he was teaching. If he taught the class, I took it

because I knew it would be deep. Martin gave me what was one of the two best lessons I ever had from a teacher, and it was done with a devastatingly dramatic flair. I was just beginning to experiment with making music out of repetitive patterns, and I brought in the beginnings of a piece of music to my lesson, something schematic and very mathematically composed. Martin spent about 30 seconds looking at it and then moved over to another chair, picked up The New York Times and started reading. I didn't know what to do, but I didn't want to fall into any trap he was setting for me, so I just sat there, fuming patiently, waiting for the next student to arrive an hour later. And so we sat. When the next student finally came Martin looked up and said ‘You know, sometimes something makes so much sense that you have to ask yourself, why do it?’ I have such a great memory of Martin, sitting in front of a harpsichord, a cigarette-length of ash dangling from his lip, with his bright eyes and a slight smirk on his face, playing Bach and seeing something in it that amused him, something that I would never see if I looked at it forever.” David Lang attracted attention to himself in the mid-1980s. An orchestral work, barely eight minutes long and dedicated to Hans Werner Henze – Eating Living Monkeys – caused a great stir. The work was inspired by an 18th century report about the strange eating habits of the Chinese Imperial family (for example eating the brains of living monkeys). These “news reports” were essentially rumours, documenting the prejudices of their period, in which uniquely, humour and brutality are inseparably mixed. The simultaneous presence of two irreconcilable feelings that extinguish each other has been a central thought in David Lang's music. In 2008 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for The Little Match Girl Passion in which he tells one of the saddest stories in world literature within the framework of the Matthew Passion – with concrete references to the music and text of Bach's work. The critic of the Washington Post, Tim Page praised this work about a child freezing to death: “I don't think I've ever been so moved by a new, and largely unheralded, composition as I was by David Lang's Little Match Girl Passion, which is unlike any music I know.” Szabolcs Molnár

SUNDAY 26 OCTOBER / 19.00

MONDAY 27 OCTOBER / 19.30

TUESDAY 28 OCTOBER / 19.30

SOLTI HALL

GRAND HALL

ORCHESTRA IN THE CENTRE ISABELLE FAUST & STUTTGART RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

ZUGLÓ PHILHARMONICS BUDAPEST

VOICE, SO CLOSE HUNGARIAN NATIONAL CHOIR FROM BARTÓK TO EÖTVÖS Bartók: Evening (BB 30) Bartók: Four Old Hungarian Folksongs (BB 60) Zoltán Jeney: Absolve Domine Bartók: Two Romanian folk songs (BB 57) Bartók: Five Slovak Folksongs for Male Chorus (BB 77) György Kurtág: János Pilinszky Bartók: Four Slovak Folksongs for Mixed Choir (BB 78) Bartók: Székely Songs for Male Chorus (BB 106) Bartók: From Olden Times for Male Chorus (BB 112) Péter Eötvös: Herbsttag (Hungarian première) Bartók: Hungarian Folk Songs (BB 99)

Isabelle Faust (violin) Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra Conductor: Heinz Holliger

Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major, op. 83 Rahmanyinov: Symphony No. 2 in E minor, op. 27 Gábor Monostori (piano) Zugló Philharmonics Budapest Conductor: Gergely Ménesi

Liszt and Bartók-Pásztory Prize recipient Mátyás Antal enhanced the reputation of the Hungarian National Philharmonic (or more precisely, its predecessor, the State Concert Orchestra) for many years as a flutist. But from the 1980s he started conducting, and he has been choral director of the National Choir since 1990. For this programme the audience of the Liszt Academy will enjoy the cream of 20th century Hungarian choral music, including Zoltán Jeney’s moving Absolve domine for 16 voices, composed in 1990, György Kurtág’s 1978 Pilinszky piece, and the Rilke arrangement written for female choir two years ago by Péter Eötvös, which receives its Hungarian première.

Isabelle Faust and her Stradivarius violin ‘Sleeping Beauty’ are regular guests in Budapest. The one-time student of Dénes Zsigmondy first came to Hungary some 25 years ago as a fresh winner of the Paganini competition, while last year she was guest of Concerto Budapest. Those who have heard her need not be told about her flexible yet powerful, natural violin technique, while anyone who hasn’t must – immediately! She performs Schumann’s rarely heard late masterpiece, the C major fantasy, and Bartók’s Violin Concerto (dedicated to his Stefi Geyer whom he loved), partnered by the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, conductor Heinz Holliger who is a brilliant oboist and active as conductor and composer, too. The concert also features Holliger’s 2008 work for orchestra and chorus, the title of which is named after a recently discovered late Debussy work, which in turn references a line by Baudelaire: ‘On evenings lit by the glowing coal-fire’.

Former student of piano at the King St Stephen School of Music, Gábor Monostori is accompanied by the Zugló Philharmonics Budapest in tackling and taming one of the scariest beasts in the piano concerto repertoire. The première of Brahms’s grandiose, 50-minute Piano Concerto in B flat major was first performed in Budapest in 1881, with the solo part played by the composer himself, conducted by Ferenc Erkel. What is more, Ferenc Liszt was in the auditorium for the occasion; he was generous in his praise (even though he was not on friendly terms with Brahms or his music). The other work is Rachmaninoff’s second symphony, which played an important part in the youthful years of the Russian composer’s life just at a time when he lacked self-confidence: in the wake of the debacle of his first symphony, the success of this orchestral piece filled Rachmaninoff with renewed faith in his compositional powers, even though he refined it decades later. Both compositions are conducted by Gergely Ménesi, leader of the Zugló Philharmonics Budapest.

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

Tickets: HUF 3 700, 5 100, 6 500, 7 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Tickets: HUF 1 900, 2 100, 2 500 Organizer: Zugló Philharmonics Budapest

Hungarian National Choir Conductor: Mátyás Antal

Schumann: Nachtlied, op. 108 Schumann: Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra, op. 131 Heinz Holliger: Ardeur Noire d’après Claude Debussy (Hungarian première) Bartók: Violin Concerto, op. posth. (BB 48a) Debussy: Images – Iberia

VESUVIUS © LENKE SZILÁGYI

“EVERY NOTE IS MY OWN RESPONSIBILITY” Herr Faust was a thirty-one-year-old secondary school language teacher, he loved music and he wanted to give sound to his enthusiasm. He had long played with the idea of learning to play the violin. It was not an artistic ambition but driven by the desire for a deeper knowledge of music. One Wednesday morning, father and daughter, hand in hand, were wandering towards the house of the violin teacher. Although little Isabelle wanted to play the piano, there was no piano teacher in the neighbourhood. Anyway, it was exciting to practise with Daddy. As to how far her daddy got with the instrument, no one knows. But his daughter now rules supreme, a goddess in the pantheon of violin virtuosi.

The pressure to conform was not the driving force behind Isabelle realising her potential. Her parents had no ambitions to carve a world star out of her. She did not exhaust herself with practice: she was a true child. Neither did they allow her to fritter away her talent. At the age of eleven, when her younger brother was also showing promise on the violin, her parents persuaded them both to team up with two other young local talents to form a string quartet. Her brother changed to the viola (he is now the solo violist of the Bremen Philharmonic), while sister played the second violin for five whole years. She benefited enormously from the communal music making and acquired a lifelong love for chamber music. It was then that she began visiting the master classes of Dénes Zsigmondy, from whom she methodically learned the entire Bartók repertoire. She practised a great deal and was pampered as the youngest and most talented Zsigmondy student. Zsigmondy knew Bartók personally and had many anecdotes about him, which made it easier for the young girl to attain a closer and more emotional understanding of these hard-to-interpret works. Little surprise, then, that her first recording made in 1997 comprised Bartók pieces. She continued her studies with Christoph Poppen, saying “under him, I became a musical adult.” After his first hearing of Isabelle performing a Mozart concerto, the teacher gave her the following instruction: “Now play it without vibrato.” That deeply shocked Isabelle. Later she came to understand that vibrato is jewel which cannot be applied indiscriminately. To this day Isabelle is happy that her teachers were two such diametrically opposed personalities as Christoph Poppen and Dénes Zsigmondy. “Although they both had the same goals, their concept of music was totally different.” This disparity did not confuse the young violinist at all. Nor did it prompt her to plump for one approach over the other. She understood that everyone has to travel their own path. “I realised that I have to make decisions, I have to think about pieces. I have to know a piece of music thoroughly, rather than just follow traditions. I have to take each step consciously while taking my suitcase to the fair. Perhaps the most important lesson I learned from my teachers is that every note I play is my own responsibility” she said in an interview. In 1987, at the age of fifteen she won the Leopold Mozart solo violin competition in Augsburg. From then on, chamber music was placed on the back burner and she performed the entire solo violin repertoire with major orchestras, from Mozart to Mendelssohn and Dvořák. Later she worked with Giovanni Antonini and Frans Brüggen, and the historic performance movement made a deep impression on her. “If you play just once on a true Baroque violin, with gut strings and an old bow, you

immediately hear the difference. But if you set off down this path, there is virtually no way back”, she said. Since 1996 Isabelle Faust has not been playing on just any instrument. Through the sponsorship of a German bank, she acquired the “Snow White” Stradivarius. This instrument was made in 1704, and obtained its nickname because for many years, it was believed to have been lost. After one hundred and fifty years of silence, Isabelle brought it back to life, and has been playing it since 1996. Hungarian audiences had the privilege of hearing in when she performed the Beethoven concerto at the Liszt Academy with András Keller and the Concerto Budapest. It was breathtaking. For Isabelle Faust, most important is music and the discovery of all kinds of music. Every composer has his own language and the performing artist must acquire these languages. They must research the characteristics of different composers, the stylistic hallmarks that belong to them alone – this work is a great joy for her because she is a highly curious person. She approaches contemporary music in the same spirit. “It is a fact that these days a musician cannot just perform museum pieces exclusively. They must make a stand for contemporary music. But concert organisers have their own responsibilities: they must give the audience the chance to encounter contemporary music because this way they become more receptive to new impressions”. This has now become her guiding creed. It is probably not easy to agree a time with Isabelle Faust. In the spring season alone she gave forty concerts across Europe. So if she is not on the stage of some distinguished musical institution, she is probably en route between Vienna, London, Barcelona or who knows how many other places. She practises in hotel rooms and regards herself fortunate that after many years there have only been two or three complaints from guests next door. Every so often, she drops into Berlin where she lives with her family. When she is asked if she is a workaholic, she laughs. “Of course not!” If need be, she can manage a whole day without playing the violin. But for her music-making is not work but pleasure. “I am in the fortunate positions that my work brings me ever more joy from day to day. This is largely due to my fellow musicians, because I think making music together is a fantastically inspiring thing. Being a musician is an unbelievably beautiful profession since you are always receiving new impressions.” ISABELLE FAUST © DETLEV SCHNEIDER

József Kling 57

WEDNESDAY 29 OCTOBER / 19.00

THURSDAY 30 OCTOBER / 19.30

FRIDAY 31 OCTOBER / 19.00

SOLTI HALL

GRAND HALL

CHAMBER MUSIC, SO CLOSE KODÁLY QUARTET Webern: Langsamer Satz Haydn: String Quartet in B flat major, op. 76/4 (‘Sunrise’) Respighi: Il Tramonto Beethoven: String Quartet in C major, op. 59/3 (‘Razumovsky’) Bernadett Wiedemann (mezzo-soprano) Kodály Quartet: Attila Falvay, Erika Tóth (violin); János Fejérvári (viola); György Éder (cello) The concert of the world-famous quartet (holders of the Liszt Prize), founded in 1966 and named after Kodály in 1971, spans more than a century of the string quartet genre. Haydn’s late masterwork, the B flat major string quartet (‘Sunrise’), and one of the most inspired works of the middle period of Beethoven’s creative life, the C major ‘Razumovsky’ quartet, are complemented by two 20th century movements. The slow movement by Anton Webern is a work of genius that the youthful composer wrote in the course of his years of study with Schönberg, in 1905. In style it is closely associated with the music of the late 19th century and primarily that of Brahms. Ottorino Respighi, famed for his bombastic symphonies, completed his only work for string quartet and soprano soloist in 1918, in which he puts to music the poem The Sunset by Shelley. The post-Romantic music, sensitively reflecting every pulse of the poem, features vocal solo by the superb Bernadett Wiedemann. It is representative of a lost age, giving a nostalgic retrospective glance to a civil world from the final year of the first global conflagration. Tickets: HUF 2 100, 3 200 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre 58

ENDRE HEGEDŰS CHOPIN RECITAL Frédéric Chopin: Polonaise in C sharp minor, op. 26 Polonaise in F sharp minor, op. 44 Etude in E major, op. 10/3 Etude in C minor, op. 10/12 (‘Revolutionary’) Waltz in B minor, op. 69/2 Waltz in A flat major, op. 34/1 Prelude in C minor, op. 28/20 Prelude in A flat major, op. 28/17 Scherzo in C sharp minor, op. 39 Three Mazurkas, op. 59 Ballad in G minor, op. 23 Sonata in B minor, op. 58 Rondo for Two Pianos in C major, op. 53 Endre Hegedűs (piano) Featuring: Katalin Hegedűs (piano)

MÁV SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Richard Strauss: Don Juan, op. 20 Four Last Songs Le bourgeois gentilhomme – suite, op. 60 Eszter Sümegi (soprano) MÁV Symphony Orchestra Conductor: Péter Csaba

“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,” professed Endre Hegedűs, outstanding pianist and winner of, among others, the prize named after Liszt. At his concert in the Liszt Academy, he selects from the oeuvre of eccentric genius Frédéric Chopin, much admired by Liszt, providing a true cross-section from this apparently narrow – piano-centred – but truly infinite composer’s universe, parading virtually the entire repository of genres favoured by Chopin. Endre Hegedűs is joined by his wife to perform the rarely heard Chopin rondo for two pianos.

In decades to come musicologists may still be scratching their heads at the social, historical and aesthetic reasons behind the burgeoning Richard Strauss cult in Hungary during the new millennium. But let’s enjoy it while it lasts: for instance, the MÁV Symphony Orchestra Strauss recital paying homage to the composer born 150 years ago. Artistic director of the ensemble Péter Csaba conducts the programme that encompasses the composer’s entire oeuvre, inasmuch as it includes the symphonic poem Don Juan written to the poem by Nikolas Lenau, which brought the 24year-old Strauss world fame, and the Four Last Songs written 60 years later, which wound up his career. The latter are sung by the excellent soprano Eszter Wierdl.

Tickets: HUF 2 200, 3 300, 4 000, 5 000 Organizer: Stúdió Liszt Kft.

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

SATURDAY 1 NOVEMBER / 11.00

SATURDAY 1 NOVEMBER / 19.30

SUNDAY 2 NOVEMBER / 19.30

GRAND HALL

Rossini: Stabat Mater

BUDAFOK DOHNÁNYI ORCHESTRA

DANUBIA ORCHESTRA ÓBUDA VON DOHNÁNYI – DESTINY

Budapest Academic Choral Society (choir master: Csaba Tőri) Budafok Dohnányi Orchestra Narrator and conductor: Gábor Hollerung

Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 26 in D major (K. 537 – ‘Coronation’) Rossini: Stabat Mater

Péter Tiszai: Concerto for String Orchestra Liszt: Dance of Death Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C minor, op. 67

Balázs Fülei (piano) Budapest Academic Choral Society (choir master: Csaba Tőri) Conductor: Gábor Hollerung

Gábor Farkas (piano) Danubia Orchestra Óbuda Conductor: Oliver von Dohnányi

UNDERSTANDING MUSIC BUDAFOK DOHNÁNYI ORCHESTRA GLOBAL CITIZENS OF HUNGARIAN MUSIC: ISTVÁN KERTÉSZ

This season the educational series of the Budafok Dohnányi Orchestra conducted by Gábor Hollerung pays tribute to ‘Global Citizens of Hungarian Music’. This concert remembers István Kertész, one of the most phenomenally talented Hungarian conductors of the 20th century, who died tragically at the peak of his career, aged just 44 (he drowned while swimming in Israel). A student of Kodály and Weiner at the Liszt Academy, he emigrated in early 1957, received a scholarship in Rome, after which he worked in German theatres, debuting at the Salzburg Festival in 1961. Afterwards he regularly conducted the greatest orchestras (in Berlin, London, Israel and elsewhere). By the 1970s he had become one of the most soughtafter conductors and had made many legendary recordings, including Rossini’s Stabat Mater. This is the work that has been chosen to recall his memory, performed by Gábor Hollerung and his ensemble along with selected soloists. Tickets: HUF 1 900, 2 300, 2 700 Organizer: Budafok Dohnányi Orchestra

Mozart and Rossini. These two geniuses of opera make a natural pair for any concert – even when it is not their opera works but a piano concerto and a religious work that feature. The fact is that whatever they composed, they conceived it in operatic form. This is equally true for Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D major, performed by Junior Prima Prize laureate Balázs Fülei, as it is for Rossini’s late masterpiece, Stabat Mater. In fact the latter was so influenced by the characteristics of 19th century Italian opera that, just a few decades after the death of Rossini, Pope Pius X banned the performance of the work in churches, citing its secular nature. The work filled with enchanting melodies is performed by selected soloists at the Budafok Dohnányi Orchestra concert under the baton of Gábor Hollerung.

Oliver von Dohnányi – a distant relation of Ernő Dohnányi – is not unknown to Hungarian audiences: he has been here several times, just a few years ago conducting Bellini’s Norma in the Palace of Arts with Edita Gruberova in the lead role. This time he leads the Danubia Orchestra Óbuda in a traditional overture-concerto-symphony concert. The opening is the String Orchestra Concerto by composer Péter Tiszai, an architect graduate but also student of composers György Orbán and János Vajda, followed by Liszt’s fiendishly difficult piano concerto Dance of Death, a paraphrase on the medieval hymn Dies irae, and then a key work of the Beethoven oeuvre, Symphony No. 5. The principal part of the Liszt work is performed by Gábor Farkas, winner of the Weimar International Liszt Competition in 2009.

Tickets: HUF 3 200, 3 900, 4 500 Organizer: Budafok Dohnányi Orchestra

Tickets: HUF 2 700, 3 500, 4 200, 4 900 Organizer: Óbudai Danubia Nonprofit Ltd. 59

OPERATIC SCETCHES (20 JUNE 2014) © LISZT ACADEMY / BALÁZS MOHAI

CARL UNANDER-SCHARIN (24 JANUARY 2014) © LISZT ACADEMY / ANDREA FELVÉGI

OVID'S METAMORPHOSES (4 JULY 2014) © LISZT ACADEMY / ANDREA FELVÉGI 60

JOSHUA BELL (7 APRIL 2014) © LISZT ACADEMY / BALÁZS MOHAI

FERENC SNÉTBERGER (14 DECEMBER 2013) © LISZT ACADEMY / GÁBOR FEJÉR

JOSHUA BELL, STEVEN ISSERLIS, DÉNES VÁRJON (7 APRIL 2014) © LISZT ACADEMY / BALÁZS MOHAI 61

MONDAY 3 NOVEMBER / 19.45 TUESDAY 4 NOVEMBER / 19.45

WEDNESDAY 5 NOVEMBER / 19.30

GRAND HALL

GRAND HALL BUDAPEST FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA BAROQUE RECITAL Locatelli: Concerto grosso in E flat major, op. 7/6 (‘Il Pianto d’Arianna’) Telemann: Double Concerto for Recorder and Flute in E minor ( TWV 52:e1) Leclair: Violin Concerto in D major, op. 10/3 Händel: Apollo and Daphne (HWV 122) Anna Lucia Richter (soprano); Nathan Berg (baritone); Stephanie-Marie Degand (violin); Anneke Boeke (recorder); Sigrid T’Hooft (Baroque gesture) Budapest Festival Orchestra Conductor: Jonathan Cohen

CHAMBER MUSIC, SO CLOSE JEAN-EFFLAM BAVOUZET & BALÁZS SZOKOLAY TWO PIANOS RECITAL Debussy: Nocturnes – Nuages, Fêtes (transcription by Maurice Ravel), Sirènes (transcription by Zoltán Kocsis) Debussy: Jeux (transcription by Jean-Efflam Bavouzet) Bartók: Two Images (BB 59 – transcription by Zoltán Kocsis) Bartók: Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion (BB 115)

Anyone who tracks the career of Iván Fischer will not be surprised to hear that the Budapest Festival Orchestra was the first symphony orchestra in Hungary to form an early music ensemble. Iván Fischer studied under one of the most important figures of early music performance practice, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and became the master’s assistant, and he even played viola da gamba in various chamber ensembles. For this occasion the historical ensemble of the Budapest Festival Orchestra under second conductor of Les Arts Florissants, Jonathan Cohen, present three Baroque concertos and an exciting Händel chamber cantata, Apollo and Daphne, that can almost be considered a mini opera. The interesting feature of the latter – besides the appearance of two internationally-recognized singers – is that the leading expert on Baroque stage gesture, Sigrid T’Hooft, took part in the preparation of this production, so that through the historical reconstruction of the gestures of performers the production will be all the more dramatic and authentic.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Balázs Szokolay (piano) Zoltán Rácz, Aurél Holló (percussion)

Tickets: HUF 2 500, 3 500, 4 400, 6 300, 10 500 Organizer: Budapest Festival Orchestra

Tickets: HUF 1 400, 2 100, 3 500, 4 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, one of today’s most exciting French pianists is an accomplished interpreter of the music of Haydn (his entire Haydn series was lauded to the skies by critics), and he is considered among the foremost exponents of Debussy and Ravel. He is also a keen proponent of contemporary music (he has a close relationship with Pierre Boulez). Balázs Szokolay, associate professor at the Liszt Academy, and Zoltán Rácz and Aurél Holló, two members of Amadinda Percussion Ensemble, are his partners at this chamber recital. Bavouzet himself transcribed Debussy’s late masterpiece Jeux for two pianos, while the first two movements of Nocturnes were transcribed by Ravel and the last by Kocsis, who also transcribed Bartók’s Two Images for orchestra. Without doubt, the headline work is the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, one of the highpoints of Bartók’s oeuvre.

JEAN-EFFLAM BAVOUZET © BEN EALOVEGA

“I'M THE LIVING COUNTER-EXAMPLE” How is it possible for a French pianist to feel closer to Bartók than to Debussy? Let's meet a musician who was Sir Georg Solti's last discovery, was supported by Georges Cziffra, and today plays chamber music with some of Hungary's greatest musicians. An interview with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, who in November will be giving a two-piano concert with Balázs Szokolay at the Liszt Academy.

Who was the first Hungarian musician you had contact with? My wife. Or rather, slightly earlier, Georges Cziffra. I won a competition in 1979 and was due to make my debut in Paris, but because of a great storm, the venue had become unusable, so the concert could not take place. Cziffra gave a charity concert a week later, the revenue from which he offered for the renovation of the hall, and he gave me the opportunity to play in one of the breaks to make up for my missing concert. How did you get to know Zoltán Kocsis? My first meeting with him and our joint concert was a turning point in my life. Kocsis wrote a commendation for my first record on which I played pieces by Haydn. This gesture launched our friendship. Later in 1995, to mark the Bartók anniversary, we gave several two-piano recitals together. On several occasions I have performed with Kocsis conducting. The concert in Berlin for composer György Kurtág's 80th birthday was a profound experience for me: I performed the composer's Double Concerto with Miklós Perényi. Kurtág was present at the rehearsals and supplied all three of us with instructions that had a deep influence on my musical thinking. Have you played with Balázs Szokolay before? This will be our first joint concert but we have known each other for a long time. A few years ago, Szokolay contacted me saying if he had the opportunity to play the Bartók sonata for two pianos, would I play the other piano part. I am very pleased that we can perform this work together. How it is possible that it took so long for a French artist to discover Debussy's music? Of course, I have always marvelled at Debussy and been interested in his art but for a long time, it didn't move anything inside me. Today you often hear in international musical life that if you are Russian, you will play Russian music better than anyone else; that if you are Hungarian you will play Bartók better than anyone; if you are French then Debussy is in your genes. Utter nonsense! I am the living counter-example of this. I was thirty-five years old when Debussy's music first moved me to tears. For the longest period, Bartók felt much closer to me. My emotional passionate relationship with Debussy's music does not derive from my identity as a Frenchman. Anna Belinszky 63

WEDNESDAY 5 NOVEMBER / 19.00

THURSDAY 6 NOVEMBER / 19.00

SOLTI HALL

THE RAPE OF LUCRETIA Britten: The Rape of Lucretia, op. 37 Opera in two acts, in English Libretto: Ronald Duncan Hungarian text: Frigyes Róna Director: János Csányi Male chorus: Gábor Csiki Female chorus: N.N. Collatinus: Krisztián Cser Junius: Zoltán Gradsach Tarquinius: Róbert Rezsnyák Lucretia: Krisztina Simon Bianca: Éva Balatoni Lucia: Ildikó Jakab Conductor: Máté Hámori The Roman legend of the brutal rape of Lucretia (while her husband was absent), who, despite her innocence, was unable to bear the shame of the attack and committed suicide on the return of her partner, was well known even in early Christian times. Of the many artistic interpretations of the tale, Shakespeare’s narrative poem and Händel’s chamber cantata are outstanding. So is the chamber opera by Benjamin Britten first performed in 1946. In the Britten Year series last year, the Opera House presented the work directed by János Csányi, and this is the production performed in the Solti Hall. Although Britten could have decided to concentrate on the brutal side of this bloody drama, the sensitivity and musical dramatic genius characteristic of the maestro meant that he preferred to place the emphasis on a delicate psychological depiction of the protagonists. The role of Lucretia is shaped by Artisjus Prize recipient Krisztina Simon, graduate of the Liszt Academy and now soloist at the Hungarian State Opera. Tickets: HUF 1 800, 3 600 Organizers: Hungarian State Opera, Liszt Academy Concert Centre 64

SONG RECITALS AT LISZT ACADEMY EMŐKE BARÁTH & GÁBOR CSALOG ‘BOUND TOGETHER FOREVER’ Schubert: Im Frühling (D. 882) Schubert: Auf dem Wasser zu singen (D. 774) Schubert: Im Abendrot (D. 799) Schubert: Ständchen (D. 889) Schubert: Gretchen am Spinnrade (D. 118) Schumann: Myrthen, op. 25 (excerpts) Fauré: Mélodies de Venise, op. 58 Debussy: Fleur des Blés Debussy: Chansons de Bilitis Poulenc: Fleurs Poulenc: Banalités (FP 107) Emőke Baráth (soprano) Gábor Csalog (piano) She was Júlia Pászthy’s student at the Liszt Academy, and during her academic study she took part in master classes with Barbara Bonney, Kiri Te Kanawa, Éva Marton, Nancy Argenta, Sylvia Sass, Deborah York and Andrea Meláth. She has won the national singing competition several times, and in 2011 she took the first prize and audience prize at the Pietro Antonio Cesti Baroque singing competition in Linz, Austria. In 2012 she sang one of the roles in the Händel production Giulio Cesare (conductor: Alan Curtis), while last year she received the lead role at the Aix-en-Provence Festival when she sang the title role in the Cavalli opera Elena, recently rediscovered 350 years after its première. From La Figaro to The Financial Times, the world’s press was united in its enthusiasm for her portrayal. The first part of the programme of her song recital is built on Schubert and Schumann songs, and after the interval there is a selection from the wealth of French song. Tickets: HUF 2 100, 3 200 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

EMŐKE BARÁTH © ZSÓFI RAFFAY

Haarfarn (Urformen der Kunst) 1928 © KARL BLOSSFELDT

THE SONG RECITAL The song recital is dead! Dead? Long live the song recital! Far-fetched? What happened to the time when a Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau could fill the Erkel Theatre auditorium with a programme of Hugo Wolf? (Okay, admittedly a not unknown pianist by the name of Sviatoslav Richter accompanied him.) If you have the fortune to remember the concerts of 30-40-50 years ago, you’d recall that it was at song recitals, in the Liszt Academy’s Grand Hall for the most part, where such icons such as Elisabeth Schwarzkopf took their final bow. And by the same token, stars of the future such as Elena Obraztsova were emerging.

The song recital was a typical genre of the middle classes. In his inexhaustible book about 19th century music, Carl Dahlhaus emphasised that the opera aria was in truth a “role poem” in which the composer “remains hidden” from the audience. By contrast, in the Lied it is the composer himself speaking, perhaps not stripped bare but presenting himself as a “lyrical ego.” This differs from sung narratives such as the ballad: the Lied is not directed conspicuously towards the audience; the public just “listens along” to it. As Dahlhaus emphasises: while listeners are a prerequisite for a ballad, the audience for a lieder is “accidental”, or random. Obviously this is also connected with the fact that the lieder recital – as one of the most intimate of concert genres – has been confined to chamber halls by concert organisers for nearly a hundred years. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, because the notion of “someone singing while others listen silently” has a long history. In middle-class houses, music-making meant people singing together, an activity for the enjoyment of the participants rather than the cultivation of an audience. One of the principal ateliers of the German language Lied, the “Berlin school”, stated as its ideal the composition of simple folk-like strophic songs. It was noted of one of the most important representatives of this trend, Johann Friedrich Reichard, that in the 1780s he was the first to perform his works before an exclusive audience who devoted rapt attention to him. And although the songs were strophic, certain performing instructions or rhythmic figures of the text nonetheless bear witness to the composer relying on singers with a gift for improvisation rather than communal singing. But even the songs of Schubert were sung at Schubertiades, private gatherings in Vienna. The partially public concerts of the Friends of Music Society – among them the 1821 “Abendunterhaltung” at which Erlkönig was performed – were still the exception. So the song only obtained its civil rights in concert life after the “king of song” had passed away. It was only when his output of about six hundred songs was complete, during the period Schumann was writing his great song cycles, that a few singers emerged who would perform songs in the concert hall. Julius Stockhausen was one of the most famous of these pioneers; he was the first in the mid-19th century who performed such complete song cycles as Die Schöne Müllerin, Winterreise or Dichterliebe on the concert podium. At his Schubert recitals, Stockhausen read out verses that the composer had not set to music, putting the song in its original literary context, better illuminating the meaning of each song (this solution for example could be used by concert organisers today.) Certainly, song recitals were initially a rarity, since in those days the fashion was for mixed programmes: chamber works alternating with songs, while at orchestral concerts, overtures, symphonies and concertos were interspersed with operatic arias or (orchestrated) songs. Frequently, only the most

popular songs from a cycle were heard, often quite removed from their original context. In Vienna by the 1870s, primarily thanks to the Schubert recitals of Gustav Walter, the independent song recital achieved an equal footing with other types of concert, and in the 1880s it grew into one of the most favoured concert genres. By the first decade of the 20th century, the lieder recital had become so widespread in Europe (including Hungary) that in Berlin, for example, there were 20 lieder recitals in a week and each one attracted a full house! With the decline of the bourgeois era, and the snuffing out of the flame of romanticism, song recitals lost much of their popularity. Is it possible to resurrect them? Can the intimacy of bourgeois salons be created amid the modern grind of concert life? One way to stimulate interest in song recitals is to expand and extend the repertoire (beyond the German language), exploring the song literature of other nations, which is often deserving of rediscovery. The juxtaposition of known works with unknown, the clashing of song compositions of earlier times with more recent compositions, the demonstration of literary and cultural historical relationships, and, not least, the precise subtitling of rough translations of song texts could also facilitate a renaissance of the song recital. The song recital is the cheapest form of concert. Nothing more is needed than a piano, a pianist and a singer. Of course, it doesn't hurt if the instrument is well tuned, nor is it a disadvantage if the pianist is a Richter and the singer a Fischer-Dieskau. It’s enough that your performers approach these masterpieces with their sophistication. Because, as Dieskau wrote in his beautiful book about the world of singing: “Vocal music is the most enlightened feeling, it is will become unambiguous, commemoration, preservation, further continuation, although in no way is it a concrete thing. Song reminds us of indestructible inter-human values. From this perspective, Schubert's Winterreise is the greatest challenge a singer can face. The emotional power and the profound sense of there being no escape permeates Wilhelm Müller's verses – even if they are not great creations of poetry – just as they saturate Schubert's music.” Máté Mesterházi

ELENA OBRAZTSOVA © JÁNOS VAJDA/ MTI 67

THURSDAY 6 NOVEMBER / 19.30

FRIDAY 7 NOVEMBER / 19.00

SATURDAY 8 NOVEMBER / 11.00

GRAND HALL

SOLTI HALL

GRAND HALL

MVM CONCERTS – THE PIANO DÉNES VÁRJON PIANO RECITAL Haydn: Sonata in C major (Hob. XVI:48) Schubert: Three pieces for piano (D. 946) Chopin: Polonaise Fantasia in A flat major, op. 61 Chopin: Waltz in A minor, op. 34/2 Chopin: Waltz in E major, op. posth. Chopin: Waltz in A flat major, op. 42 Chopin: Nocturne in C sharp minor, op. 27/1 Chopin: Scherzo in B minor, op. 20

LISZT KIDZ ACADEMY THE ORCHESTRA FOR 10-15-YEAR-OLDS Britten: The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra ( Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell), op. 34

Dénes Várjon (piano) Audiences of the Liszt Academy need little introduction to Dénes Várjon, who has reached the peak of his career in parallel with the renovation of the palace of music at Liszt Ferenc Square. At last December’s Anda Géza Festival he gave a memorable solo recital as the only Hungarian winner in the history of the International Anda Géza Piano Competition, this spring his concert in partnership with Joshua Bell and Steven Isserlis was hugely successful, and this followed by two concerts in which he performed Beethoven’s entire piano concertos accompanied by Concerto Budapest. What is more, these were just his concerts in the Liszt Academy over the past season. Now we can hear him again in a solo recital as part of the series MVM – The Piano, playing a magical sonata by Haydn, three Schubert piano pieces published by Brahms and originally destined as an impromptu, and Chopin. Tickets: HUF 3 000, 3 500, 4 000, 5 000, 6 000 Organizer: Jakobi Ltd. 68

Danubia Orchestra Óbuda Conductor and storyteller: Máté Hámori

Psychologists and anthropologists say that any grouping of over 30 people becomes unmanageable. So how does a symphony orchestra manage to operate? What is the conductor’s role and what do the individual instrumental sections do? Conductor Máté Hámori at the head of Danubia Orchestra Óbuda aims to answer these and similar questions at the concert for 10-15-year-old children (and their parents, grandparents and great grandparents), using Benjamin Britten’s The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1946) as an aid. Britten wrote the variations on a musical theme of Henry Purcell at the request of the British Ministry of Education, and although it was a state commission, it is nonetheless a work of genius. Tickets: HUF 800, 1 200, 1 600, 1 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

SATURDAY 8 NOVEMBER / 16.00; 20.00

SUNDAY 9 NOVEMBER / 19.00

SOLTI HALL

TUESDAY 11 NOVEMBER / 19.30

GRAND HALL

CARACAS YOUTH ORCHESTRA AMBASSADORS OF THE ‘EL SISTEMA’ Revueltas: Sensemayá Rolf Martinsson: Double Bass Concerto No. 1 Saint-Saëns: Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78 („Organ”) Edicson Ruiz (double bass) Caracas Youth Orchestra Conductor: Dietrich Paredes

1ST BUDAPEST INTERNATIONAL GUITAR COMPETITION FINAL AND GALA CONCERT The classical guitar is gaining popularity the world over: more and more children choose it as their first instrument, and ever more brilliant guitar workshops are being set up around the world. One such can be found at the Liszt Academy, and its leader, Liszt and Artisjus Prize holder József Eötvös. After several international guitar festivals, numerous major awards and an enthusiastically received album (in which he plays his own guitar transcription of Bach’s Goldberg Variations), Eötvös decided to establish an international guitar competition. The preliminary rounds and semi-finals – held in front of a jury of illustrious international artists – take place in classroom X of the Liszt Academy between 5-7 November, while the venue for the final and gala concert on 8 November is the Solti Hall. Tickets: HUF 3 000 (for either the final or the gala concert); HUF 4 500 (for both concerts) Organizer: Attaca Művészeti Bt.

Almost 400,000 children are studying European classical music on a daily basis in Venezuela, a country more renowned for its oil, drug trade, turf wars, poverty and dictatorship. The keys to the system developed by José Antonio Abreu in 1975 are participation in the orchestral community and social sensitivity: children, the overwhelming majority of whom come from extremely poor families, learn to play instruments. Of the more than 30 symphony orchestras in the system, the Caracas Youth Orchestra is one of the most important, and its leader, 34-year-old Dietrich Paredes, is one of the great finds of El Sistema, as is Edicson Ruiz, who at the age of nine worked as a shop-floor shelf stacker, while by his 17th birthday he was playing as a double bassist with the Berlin Philharmonic. Two works are performed in the first half: a popular orchestral piece by Mexican Silvestre Revueltas (1899–1940), Sensemayá (1938), and one of the busiest Swedish composers of our day, Rolf Martinsson’s Double Bass Concerto No. 1 (2012), transcribed last year by the composer specially for Ruiz. After the intermission it is the turn of perhaps the the best piece of Camille Saint-Saëns, the so-called Organ-symphony. Tickets: HUF 1 200, 1 700, 2 800, 3 900 Organizers: Liszt Academy Concert Centre 69

UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE Music is an organised mass of information which is capable of positively stimulating the human nervous system and influencing the functioning of our entire organism, even though we still do not understand how – believes András Dinnyés, director of the St István University Applied Animal Genetics and Biotechnology Laboratory, a Dénes Gábor prize-winning stem cell researcher.

We tend to think of natural sciences and music as worlds apart, but you say they are related. Both musicians and researchers communicate with each through the aid of an exceptionally complex code system that is universal and can be understood anywhere in the world. In our international research group, men and women from many different nations work together in a similar way to an orchestra and yet they understand each other thanks to a shared language. Papers describing scientific discoveries are public treasures in the same way that musical compositions are. A cross section of the global network of music and science throws up musical scientists, such as Albert Einstein or musicians who have done science such as the American jazz pianist and neurobiology graduate Vijay Iyer. Can you prove that music has a positive physiological effect? During the course of our research based on stem cells, searching for medicines for the various symptoms of Alzheimers, we modelled a brain development in the “test tube” – though we weren’t able to experiment with music because we cannot make the stimulants deriving from the complex operation of the hearing organs access the network of nerve cells we had cultivated. We know that nerve cells react sensitively to environmental stimuli, and it became clear that these special cells are only life-supporting when organised into a network “in the test tube”: they absolutely do not want to be alone. Researchers in molecular biology have shown that by the end of our teenage years brain structures are exceptionally pliable, even in the realm of the operation of genes. Young people listening to music are being stimulated in a very important way. Organised stimuli such as music multiply the number of connections in the nerve cell network, improving their quality, I would say, and making the entire dynamically changing system healthier. External stimuli also have a great effect on the operation of our genes, so not only nutrition, the environment or lifestyle, can exert a great influence on us at the genetic level but even regular attendance of concerts. Not only the inherited gene system but the way genes respond to this rapidly changing environment determines our health and quality of life. Furthermore, these changes can be inherited as well. We cannot know for sure to what extent a concert experience can be “etched” into the operation of our genes and passed on to the next generation, but it is certain that through the appropriate quality of lifestyle we largely direct our fate so it is not entirely pre-written in our genes. Tamás Vajna

ANDRÁS DINNYÉS 70

ENTRY IN THE GUEST BOOK OF LISZT ACADEMY CHICK COREA (13 MAY 2014)

SUNDAY 16 NOVEMBER / 11.00

SUNDAY 16 NOVEMBER / 19.00

MONDAY 17 NOVEMBER / 19.30

SOLTI HALL

GRAND HALL

VOICE, SO CLOSE NEW FRANZ LISZT CHAMBER CHOIR LOVE AND DEATH

LISZT KIDZ ACADEMY THE STRINGS FOR 10-15-YEAR-OLDS Accord Quartet Students of the Folk Music Department of Liszt Academy Storyteller: Mátyás Bolya A lacquered wooden box in the shape of a human with a long neck and four strings: What is it? The answer is not simple (or more precisely, the question is not specific enough), because it could be a violin, viola, cello or double bass. The second concert in the series introducing instruments of the Liszt Kidz Academy for 10-15-year-old school kids (as well as parents, grandparents and great grandparents) shows off string instruments. We learn about their relationship to each other, whether the bows really do use horsehair, and how these marvellous instruments are used in classical music and the folk tradition. This exploration is aided by the Junior Prima Prize Accord Quartet and the string ensemble comprising students of the Folk Music Department of Liszt Academy, not forgetting Mátyás Bolya, who as a practising musician, professor at the Liszt Academy and, as a father several times over, is an experienced storyteller. Tickets: HUF 1 600 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre 72

Lachner: Stabat Mater, op. 154 Gallus: Ecce quomodo moritur justus Nees: Passio Super Galli Cantu (Hungarian première) Macfarren: Seven Shakespeare Songs Vajda János: Hajt az idő (world première) Petr Eben: Love and Death Zsófia Frimmel (soprano); Aliz Andrea Kiss (alto); Tamás Matin (tenor); András Handler (bass) New Franz Liszt Chamber Choir Conductor: Péter Erdei The name Péter Erdei is a byword for excellence in musical circles. He conducted the Hungarian Radio Chorus for many years; he is an honorary professor at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music and an Artist of Merit. His continued dedication is proven by the fact that in 2010 he recruited a chorus from among final year students and graduates and – reviving a tradition extinct for three decades – he founded the New Franz Liszt Chamber Choir. Their concert begins with Stabat Mater, written by Franz Lachner, a significant composer from the generation after Beethoven. This is followed by Passio Super Galli Cantu by Vic Nees, who died last year and was one of the leading figures in Flemish choral culture. After the Shakespeare-settings of on of the leading ligths of British Victorian music society, George MacFarren, two contemporary works close the concert. Tickets: HUF 2 100, 3 200 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

GÁBOR BOLDOCZKI AND FRANZ LISZT CHAMBER ORCHESTRA Marcello: Prelude, aria and presto Torelli: Trumpet Concerto in D major (G. 28) Corelli: Concerto grosso in G minor, op. 6/8 (‘Christmas’) Vivaldi: Violin Concerto in G major, op. 3/3 (arrangement for trumpet) Beethoven–Mahler: String Quartet in F minor, op. 95 (‘Serioso’) Donizetti: Concertino in G major for English Horn and Strings (arrangement for trumpet) Gábor Boldóoczki (trumpet) Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra (artistic director: János Rolla) “The trumpet is also capable of bel canto,” the bewitched music critic of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote of Gábor Boldoczki. The fact is that the Liszt Prize winning trumpet player really is able to extract exquisite sounds from the instrument, and in any register. It thus comes as no surprise that he was the first trumpet soloist ever at the Salzburg Festival. He is contracted to Sony Classics, and he regularly travels the world to perform at major concert halls, this year with the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra. Their Liszt Academy concert promises to be a truly joyous occasion featuring well-known Baroque compositions and rarely performed masterworks such as Gaetano Donizetti’s Concertino in G major originally written for English horn. Tickets: HUF 2 600, 4 500, 6 900, 8 900 Organizer: Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra

For connoisseurs. The new C-Class. Mercedes-Benz is a proud supporter of Liszt Academy’s world-class education and concert life.

Please visit our webpage at www.mercedes-benz.hu. For illustration purposes only. C-Class combined fuel consumption: 4.0–5.7 l/100 kms, combined CO2-emissions: 103–132 g/kms.

TUESDAY 18 NOVEMBER / 19.30

WEDNESDAY 19 NOVEMBER / 19.30

THURSDAY 20 NOVEMBER / 19.00

GRAND HALL

SOLTI HALL

IN MEMORIAM MIHÁLY BÄCHER

ANDREA ROST & CONCERTO BUDAPEST Beethoven: Symphony No. 1 in C major, op. 21 Mozart: Non temer, amato bene (K. 490) Mozart: Bella mia fiamma (K. 528) Mozart: Nehmt meinen Dank, ihr holden Gönner! (K. 383) Górecki: Symphony No. 3, op. 36 (‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’) Andrea Rost (soprano) Concerto Budapest Conductor: András Keller This special concert by Andrea Rost and Concerto Budapest starts with an early Beethoven symphony, followed by three Mozart concert arias and Polish composer Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 3. The latter work is important not only because it marks the composer’s shift from avantgarde to tonal music, but also because it still ranks as one of the most popular contemporary pieces of music. Fifteen years after its composition in 1992, the London Sinfonietta made a recording of the work, and in just two years this album sold 700,000 copies. Soprano solos feature in all three movements of the harrowing ‘Sorrowful Songs’ symphony: the first movement is based on a 15th century Polish lament of Mary set to music; the second uses a prison inscription from the Second World War as its motif, and the third is based on a Silesian folk song. Tickets: HUF 3 300, 4 800, 6 500 Organizer: Concerto Budapest 74

Pollyanna (1920) An Eastern Westerner (1920) Captain Kidd’s Kids (1919)

Beethoven: 32 Variations in C minor (WoO 80) Liszt: Petrarch Sonnet 104 Liszt: Variations on a Theme by Bach („Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen”) Chopin: Preludes, op. 28 (excerpts) Chopin: Nocturne in C sharp minor, op. 27 Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 5 Liszt: Valse Oubliée No. 1 Liszt: The Bells of Geneva Brahms: Sonata in F minor for Two Pianos, op. 34b

Composers: Lode Mertens, Florian Ross, Dieter Limbourg Brussels Jazz Orchestra Artistic director: Frank Vaganée

Gyöngyi Keveházi, Vera Kancsár, Enikő Lőte, Luiz de Moura Castro, Kálmán Dráfi, Sándor Falvai, István Gulyás, Tamás Bolba, Gabriella Jónás (piano)

In the course of the history of the Brussels Jazz Orchestra, founded by saxophonistcomposer Frank Vaganée in 1993, the ensemble has not only conquered concert halls but the world of silent film, too. As a part of their project ‘BJO vs. Big White Screen’ launched in 2011, they wrote or commissioned music for several silent movies after recording the music for the Oscar winning hit The Artist as partners of the Brussels Philharmonic. In their latest project for autumn 2014, they are touring with two silent films from 1920 and one from 1919, to which Loder Mertens, Florian Ross and Dieter Limbourg have composed accompanying music. Legendary actress Mary Pickford, known at the time as America’s Sweetheart, played the title role in Pollyanna, while the lead role in the other two films was king of ‘daredevil comedy’ and chief rival to Chaplin and Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd. This is a compulsory programme for devotees of big band music and silent movies.

Mihály Bächer (1924–1993), born 90 years ago, ranks among the great pianists of the 20th century. He studied under the Dohnányi-student György Faragó at the national music school, and after the premature death of his master he continued studying under Béla Böszörményi-Nagy at the Liszt Academy. He was presented with the Liszt Prize for his recording of Liszt’s Dance of Death at the age of 28, and in 1956 he won second prize at the International Liszt-Bartók Piano Competition (Lev Vlassenko took first prize, Lazar Berman third). He gave many recitals and made numerous recordings with his regular chamber partner Dénes Kovács, and from 1962 until his death he taught at the Liszt Academy, launching brilliant pianists of several generations on their career. On the anniversary of his birth it is now their turn to pay tribute to Mihály Bächer, under the leadership of guardian of Bächer’s legacy, Kálmán Dráfi, head of the Keyboard Department.

BRUSSELS JAZZ ORCHESTRA ‘SWEETHEART & THE DAREDEVIL’

Tickets: HUF 1 400, 2 100, 3 500, 4 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre Sponsor: Flemish Government

Tickets: HUF 1 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

BIG BAND VS THE BIG WHITE SCREEN The acronym BJO resonates with promise. This is true if you happen to be thinking about a Hungarian big band. But this time it’s not the Budapest Jazz Orchestra but the Brussels Jazz Orchestra that will be delighting both eye and ear on November 19.

The Belgian BJO celebrated its twentieth birthday last year and looked back to what has been a rich career, during the course of which they have welcomed guests such as Maria Schneider, Kenny Werner, Dave Liebman, McCoy Tyner, David Linx, Maria João and Lee Konitz. Local stars who have played with the band include Philip Catherine and Bert Joris, and the results of these collaborations have been recorded on disc. The Brussels Jazz Orchestra – and this is true of its Hungarian peer too – is firmly determined to look well beyond jazz standards and traditional arrangements from the swing era, so they regularly colour their programmes with their own arrangements, or those created especially for them. As a result, the specialist jazz paper DownBeat ranked them in 2004 as one of the top eight big bands in the world. Thanks to plaudits such as these, and not least their energetic playing style and the convincing individual achievements of their musicians, they are regularly celebrated at festivals and concert halls in Europe and the United States. This big band steered by saxophonist and artistic director Frank Vaganée is now turning its back on both jazz standards and the customary concert style of performance – and not for the first time. In 2003 emerged the idea to work with the Royal Belgian Film Archive by providing a complete musical background for silent films. The first piece in the BJO vs The Big White Screen series was Big Cities in the Twenties, and for three years they had great success with their programme Piccadilly. This was only surpassed by the triumph of their music for the 2011 multi-Oscar winning film The Artist. In autumn 2014 they set off on tour with the third edition of their silent film series, in which three films made between 1919 and 1920 get the BJO treatment courtesy of trombone player and composer Lode Mertens: the moving Pollyanna starring the American big draw of the time Mary Pickford. The other two films feature Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton's rival Harold Lloyd, The Eastern Westerner and Captain Kidd's Kids – the concert title is inspired by the two stars: The Sweetheart and the Daredevil. The musical accompaniment to the screened film is not just about replacing the usual honky-tonk with a more “colourful” sound; it also presents a bridge for the today's audiences between the world of a hundred years ago and the present. Barbara Bércesi

BRUSSELS JAZZ ORCHESTRA © PHILE DEPREZ 75

THURSDAY 20 NOVEMBER / 19.45 FRIDAY 21 NOVEMBER / 19.45 SATURDAY 22 NOVEMBER / 15.30

FRIDAY 21 NOVEMBER / 19.00

SOLTI HALL

GRAND HALL

ACOUSTIC, AUTHENTIC KÁTYA TOMPOS & GÓBÉ ORCHESTRA

MIKHAIL PLETNEV & BUDAPEST FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, op. 11 (orchestration by Mikhail Pletnev) Glazunov: The Seasons, op. 67 Seong-Jin Cho (piano) Budapest Festival Orchestra Conductor: Mikhail Pletnev

MIKHAIL PLETNEV AND GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY © BFO / ESZTER GORDON

South Korean Seong-Jin Cho (student of the Paris Conservatoire) is just 20 years old, but he already has major concert experience. At the age of 14 he won the Chopin Competition in Moscow, and a year later he achieved the same result at the Hamamatsu International Piano Competition in Japan. He has performed under the baton of Lorin Maazel, Valery Gergiev and Marek Janowski, and has partnered legendary pianist and conductor Mikhail Pletnev on more than one occasion. In this concert with the Budapest Festival Orchestra he performs the Piano Concerto in E minor by Chopin (orchestrated by Pletnev), followed by The Seasons by Alexander Glazunov (1899), a ballet piece rarely heard in Hungary. Tickets: HUF 2 500, 4 600, 5 900, 8 400, 13 600 Organizer: Budapest Festival Orchestra

Guest: Kátya Tompos (vocal) Góbé Orchestra: Ádám Kiss B. (violin, viola); Máté Vizeli (violin, violas, guitar, cobza); Mátyás Egervári (dulcimer, bagpipes, flutes, tambura, percussion); Imre Csasznyi (tambura, viola); Márton Timár (double bass) True to their name (Góbé translates roughly as wily highlander), the young musicians gathered from different parts of the Carpathian Basin craftily combine various styles. They founded Góbé Orchestra in 2007 during their time at conservatory. Their art has deep roots in folk, but they are open to music from all over the world. They appeared in Fonó, in the Utolsó Óra (Final Hour) dance house, before finding a home in Szimplakert. In 2011 they won the 1st Talentométer talent contest in the folk music/world music category, and their first recording was released the following year. They are equally happy playing children’s programmes, in dance houses or major concerts. They have performed together with László Porteleki (Muzsikás) and János Csík (Csík Orchestra). This time their partner is the enthralling actress-singer Kátya Tompos. The functioning of the Góbé Orchestra is a fine example of what Kodály once said: “The world is increasingly open, and art confined to a single people has gradually lost its relevance. We are closer to a realization of world music than world literature as conceived of by Goethe.” Tickets: HUF 2 100, 3 200 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

LIGHT PLAY – BLACK-WHITE-GREY (1930) © LÁSZLÓ MOHOLY-NAGY

SATURDAY 22 NOVEMBER / 19.00

SUNDAY 23 NOVEMBER / 15.30

SOLTI HALL

GRAND HALL

JUBILEE CONCERT OF ILONA PRUNYI 50 YEARS ON STAGE Chopin: Impromptu in A flat major, op. 29 Chopin: Impromptu in C sharp minor, op. 66 Chopin: Four Mazurkas, op. 24 Chopin: Nocturne in B flat minor, op. 9/1 Liszt: Il Sospiro Liszt–Gounod: Faust Waltz Dohnányi: Sextet in C major, op. 37 Ilona Prunyi (piano); Ádám Banda (violin); János Fejérvári (viola); Richard Rózsa (cello); Zsolt Szatmári (clarinet); Zoltán Szőke (horn)

ILONA PRUNYI © KATA SCHILLER

“Ilona Prunyi is one of the towering figures of Hungarian music life; her virtuosity is quite remarkable.” So said Annie Fischer about the Liszt and BartókPásztory Prize winning musician who has taught at the Liszt Academy for half a century and is still giving recitals, and whose name is associated with nearly fifty recordings. She also sparked the Dohnányi renaissance in Hungary. Of course, in the case of Ilona Prunyi astonishing virtuosity is of the least importance: of far greater relevance is the humanist attitude that springs from her music making that has defined her teaching. In the first half of the concert she performs Liszt and Chopin works, and then – in the company of selected chamber partners – she unveils a rarely heard masterpiece by her favourite composer, Ernst von Dohnányi. The 1935 Sextet in C major employs the late 19th century idiom, but there is a jazz overtone in its closing movement: the magnificent finale is as though Gershwin had spent too much time in a Vienna hotel orchestra from the turn of the century, and the ironic Mahler had whispered a couple of ideas to him. Tickets: HUF 1 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

ZUGLÓ PHILHARMONICS BUDAPEST Petrovics: Vörösmarty Overture, op. 41 János Vajda: Magnificat Rimski-Korsakov: Scheherazade, op. 35 Áron Dóczi (violin) Katalin Gémes (mezzo-soprano) Zugló Philharmonics Budapest Conductor: Kálmán Záborszky “It would be a mistake to consider all those treasures amassed by the masters of centuries as museum objects, and not to use them. I don’t think it is our job to discover chords, means, effects never heard before, but rather that we try to build something that is ours and ours alone out of existing treasures. It is obvious that these works are sustained solely through the strength of talent.” János Vajda thus avowed his creed in an interview a few years ago, and there can be few other works that better underpin his attitude than the Magnificat written for solo mezzo-soprano, chorus and orchestra in 1991. The composition, rich in historical stylistic motifs, is performed in the Zugló Philharmonics Budapest’s concert featuring Katalin Gémes, followed by Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade (violin solo by Áron Dóczi) – among the most captivating works of the late 19th century – with conductor Kálmán Záborszky on the podium. Tickets: HUF 1 900, 2 100, 2 500 Organizer: Zugló Philharmonics Budapest

WE ARE ON THE SAME WAVELENGTH

TOGETHER IT’S POSSIBLE Liszt Academy is supported by T-Systems Hungary www.t-systems.hu

ZENEAKADÉMIA/FEJÉR GÁBOR

Zeneakademia_egymasra_175x220_eng.indd 1

28/05/14 10:08

SUNDAY 23 NOVEMBER / 19.30

WEDNESDAY 26 NOVEMBER / 19.00

GRAND HALL

SOLTI HALL CHAMBER MUSIC, SO CLOSE KIM KASHKASHIAN & PÉTER NAGY

ZOLTÁN KOCSIS & THE LISZT ACADEMY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Tchaikovsky: The Tempest, op. 18 Grieg: Piano Concerto in A minor, op. 16 Brahms: Symphony No. 1 in C minor, op. 68 Ivett Gyöngyösi (piano) Liszt Academy Symphony Orchestra Conductor: Zoltán Kocsis The conductor on the first evening of the concert series of the Liszt Academy Symphony Orchestra, sponsored by Erste Bank, is Zoltán Kocsis. This is not the first time that Kocsis has conducted the students of Liszt Academy, and we’re hopeful it won’t be the last. After all, the intellectual return and the musical intensity of the rehearsals and concert under the baton of the director of the Hungarian National Philharmonic are tantamount to several semesters of study for the students. The concert programme contains three 19th century works, played out in overture-concertosymphony order. Tchaikovsky’s rarely performed The Tempest after Shakespeare’s play is couple with Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 with Grieg’s rightly popular Piano Concerto in A minor in between. The soloist is the young and multiple prize winning (including a Junior Prima Prize) Ivett Gyöngyösi, a student of Kálmán Dráfi and Attila Némethy. Tickets: HUF 1 400, 2 100, 3 500, 4 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre The Liszt Academy Symphony Orchestra is supported by the Liszt Academy Friends. The concert series of the Liszt Academy Symphony Orchestra is supported by Erste Bank. 80

Schumann: Phantasiestücke, op. 73 László Tihanyi: Eight Invocations to the Lunar Phases, op. 53 Britten: Lachrymae, op. 48 (Reflections on a song of Dowland) Schumann: Fünf Stücke in Volkston, op. 102 Kim Kashkashian (viola) Péter Nagy (piano) One of today’s most influential viola players, the Armenian-American Kim Kashkashian, has countless links to Hungarian musical culture. Her masters include György Kurtág and Ferenc Rados, she is an authoritative interpreter of 20th century Hungarian (and naturally other) new music, while last year she won a Grammy Award for her Ligeti-Kurtág album. Her chamber partners have included Gidon Kremer, Yo Yo Ma, as well as Péter Nagy, head of the keyboard programme of the Liszt Academy’s doctoral school and professor at the State University of Music and the Performing Arts Stuttgart. Their concert brackets two 20th century compositions around two Schumann pieces. Britten’s 1950, movingly beautiful work is structured on a song by English composer John Dowland from c. 1600, while László Tihanyi’s 2011 Eight Invocations to the Lunar Phases – which the composer dedicated to the Kashkashian-Nagy duo – examines the phases of the Moon in eight movements, turning the astronomical phenomenon into a psychological story, meanwhile revealing the most varied forms of cooperation between the two instruments and multiple characters of sound. Tickets: HUF 2 100, 3 200 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre Sponsor: NKA

KIM KASHKASHIAN © STEVE RISKIND

LETTING GO The editors asked me to write about my Hungarian affiliations. Perhaps I will disappoint your expectations: because I do not know anything. Yet, it seems that, for me both influence and instinctive guidance have often had Hungarian sources.

Let me start with memories of Sándor Végh at the Marlboro Festival in the late '70s. He spoke to us about using the bow as if it were a breathing, living thing: about allowing it its own life; that our power came from release. Then he showed us that when your sound is living and breathing, you do not need to “help” each other with cues. Again, true power occurs when doing less... He was one of few interpretive artists I have encountered who always had instinctive access to the balance of the golden mean (the Fibonacci point) in his musical structures. Much later I had the good fortune to work with György Kurtág. This work opened unexpected doors: his work with interpreting artists is based on deep intuition, but supported by a breadth of knowledge that is unique. We examined the Brahms sonatas, Schumann, solo Bach, the unfinished Bartók concerto, and of course, always, his own compositions. I learned much about colour, control, clarity, speaking and singing, but again the main concern was to create balance: in gesture, emotional content and structure. He would pull the most seemingly unrelated musical examples together until you heard the parallels: until you understood. Kurtág once said to me that we musicians must torture ourselves until we get it right. He was referring to his own compositional process, and the elimination of all but the necessary. And he also worked with interpreters toward the same goal: creating a potent truth by expressing only the necessary. The work with Péter Eötvös, first on Replica, the work for viola and orchestra, and then on the Bartók concerto, had a very different flavour to it. It was at about this time that I was introduced to the sound files of the Bartok archive collection, and began to sense the depth of relationship between spoken and sung language and then the essence of grammar; in thought, in gesture, in structure of all kinds. Péter Eötvös hears like a wolf: nothing passes his attention unremarked, yet he remains infinitely flexible in accepting interpretations, as long as the grammatical balance is right. Again, it is about the magic of the Fibonacci point. I believe that every human has a sixth sense which intuitively recognizes this balance point, yet we spend most of our time struggling to reproduce it. Probably, as in any of the great disciplines (even the martial arts) the final work is about letting go! Kim Kashkashian

THURSDAY 27 NOVEMBER / 19.00

FRIDAY 28 NOVEMBER / 19.30

SATURDAY 29 NOVEMBER / 10.30 and 15.00

GRAND HALL

GÁBOR FARKAS & MÁV SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Haydn: Symphony No. 94 in G major (‘Surprise’) Bartók: Piano Concerto No. 3 (BB 127) Beethoven: Symphony No. 1 in C major, op. 21 Gábor Farkas (piano) MÁV Symphony Orchestra Conductor: Gábor Takács-Nagy Three Bartók piano concertos, three different worlds. The first two represent the style of piano playing characterized by Bartók himself as “bone and muscle”. The third, composed just months before his death – the final few bars of which he was unable to orchestrate – is special for two reasons: firstly, he did not write it for himself, unlike the other two, but for his wife, Ditta Pásztory, and secondly, it bears evidence of that late classicist trend that also defined Bartók’s other works written in America. This stunningly beautiful work is performed by Liszt and Prima Junior Prize winner Gábor Farkas, a tutor of the Liszt Academy who has recently been awarded his doctorate, with the MÁV Symphony Orchestra, which under the baton of Gábor TakácsNagy, will also play Haydn’s popular ‘Surprise’ symphony and Beethoven’s First Symphony written just a few years later and showing clear evidence of strong Haydn influences. Tickets: HUF 3 000, 3 500, 4 000 Organizer: MÁV Symphony Orchestra 82

STORY-TELLING MUSIC ON THE SPOT THE STRINGS DEPARTMENT Works by Bach, Ligeti, Ysaÿe, Sarasate, Dohnányi, Kodály, Paganini and Hindemith Miklós Szenthelyi, Vilmos Szabadi, Brigitta Makó, Tünde Makó (violin); Péter Bársony, Dániel Krähling (viola); Csaba Onczay (cello) The next in the On the Spot series introducing the departments and workshops of the Liszt Academy turns the spotlight on the Strings Department. The violin and cello has been taught at the Academy since the earliest days in 1875, the violin faculty founded by Jenő Hubay and the latter by Dávid Popper, and throughout the 20th century they turned out world-famous string players with the addition of viola and double bass classes: Ede Zathureczky, József Szigeti, Zoltán Székely, Sándor Végh and Dénes Kovács, to name but a few of the illustrious former students and professors, all of whom contributed to the tradition of Hungarian string performance in their own way. The concert by the department currently headed by Kossuth laureate Miklós Szenthelyi selects from the past 300 years of the strings genre. Tickets: HUF 1 200, 1 700, 2 800, 3 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

L. Mozart: Divertimento in G major (‘Children’s Symphony’) Mozart: Divertimento in F major (K. 522) – 2nd and 4th movements Haydn: Symphony No. 94 in G major (‘Kettledrum’) – 2nd movement Rossini: William Tell – overture Bartók: Slightly Tipsy (BB 103/4) J. Strauss: Tritsch-Tratsch Polka, op. 214 J. Strauss: Pizzicato Polka, op. 449 Danube Symphony Orchestra Conductor: Balázs Stauróczky ‘Story-telling Music’ is Hungary’s longest-running educational music series. Over the past few decades, generations of children have become acquainted with classical music as participants in this series of concerts. This time, popular compositions from the last 300 years are brought alive by Balázs Stauróczky, a graduate of the Liszt Academy and currently conductor at the Operetta Theatre. The programme includes Leopold Mozart’s so-called ‘Children’s Symphony’, his son Wolfgang’s parody on village musicians, and the witty Haydn symphony movement renowned for its surprising kettledrum outbursts. Tickets: HUF 1 400 Organizer: Philharmonia Hungary Concert and Festival Agency

SATURDAY 29 NOVEMBER / 19.00

SUNDAY 30 NOVEMBER / 19.30

SOLTI HALL

GRAND HALL

TALENT OBLIGE ANASTASIA RAZVALYAEVA HARP FANTASIES

BEYOND MUSIC… TAMÁS VÁSÁRY MUSICAL CONVERSATIONS

Froberger: Lamentation faite sur la mort très douloureuse de Sa Majesté Impériale Ferdinand le troisième Rameau: La Dauphine Rameau: L’Egyptienne Rameau: L’Entretien des Muses Rameau: Les Cyclopes Rameau: La Rappel des Oiseaux Walter-Kühne: Rigoletto paraphrase Galeotti: Fantaisie op. 138 Chopin: Waltz in B minor, op.69/2 Chopin: Mazurka in C major, op.24/2 Chopin: Nocturne in C sharp minor, op. posth.. Walter-Kühne: Fantasy on the themes from Eugene Onegin

Works by Béla Bartók

Anastasia Razvalyaeva (harp)

ANASTASIA RAZVALYAEVA © ZSÓFI RAFFAY

The series “Talent Oblige” of the Liszt Academy Concert Centre provides the opportunity for several students or ensembles of the Liszt Academy to share their talent every half year. On the second evening of the autumn semester it is the turn of Anastasia Razvalyaeva, who is of Russian origin but has lived in Hungary for more than twenty years. In this solo recital the Prima Junior laureate harpist – currently a doctoral student at the Liszt Academy and winner of numerous competitions – selects from her repertoire that spans a good 300 years: Baroque and Romantic keyboard works transcribed for harp, as well as virtuoso, original harp compositions. Tickets: HUF 1 600 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

MR Choir (choir master: Zoltán Pad); MR Symphony Orchestra Conductor: Tamás Vásáry “His musical individuality is made distinct by the entirely unique knitting together of ancient primitiveness with the most advanced culture. His music is one, an entirety unto itself, with a unified structure and without any trace of plagiarism or imitation.” These are the words of Zoltán Kodály about Béla Bartók in the columns of the magazine Nyugat on the première of Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. The audience no longer sees Bartók’s music as a seven-gate castle, said Kodály in the same journal, but a guiding authority through Bartók’s oeuvre is still welcome for many of us. Particularly if we have the luck to find it is Tamás Vásáry – an artist with deep insight and profound sensitivity – who undertakes this initiation going beyond simple teaching. Zoltán Kodály’s former assistant, the perfect storyteller, pianist and conductor Tamás Vásáry, confidently brings us closer to the composer called the ‘good doctor’ in the poem by Gyula Illyés: “… do not soothe; / who with the fingers of your music / touching our soul, you always touch, / exactly where it hurts…” Tickets: HUF 2 000, 3 000, 4 000 Students and concessions: HUF 1 400, 2 100, 2 800 Organizer: MR Music Ensembles 83

PARITY Nothing demonstrates better the symbiosis of teaching and concertgiving than the concert series “On the Spot”. On the occasion of these concerts that showcase the string as well as keyboard and harp faculties, violinist Miklós Szenthelyi, acting director of the string faculty, and pianist Kálmán Dráfi, director of the keyboard and harp faculty, talked to the Liszt Academy Concert Magazine about the juxtaposition of tradition and modernity, how the faculties collaborate and the need for competition.

Are your students in awe of the atmosphere of the Academy’s Great Hall and perhaps overawed by having to follow the musical titans who have trod the stage’s boards? Miklós Szenthelyi: For decades, I have made my students give concerts: it is a fundamental professional requirement that they get accustomed to the atmosphere of concerts before picking up their diplomas. But even I can't properly prepare them for the Grand Hall. Kálmán Dráfi: The spirit of our predecessors shapes everything. This university is celebrated due to our predecessors; the least we can do is live up to its aura. It is already a great achievement if we can attain the standards of the tradition. Competition results show that you are doing so successfully. KD: There are hundreds of competitions but survey the outcomes of aspiring youngsters and it becomes clear that only a fraction enjoy an international career. I remember a Liszt competition where the winner gave a concert in the Great Hall before it was renovated. The audience came, listened politely and then it was all forgotten. MSZ: For managers competition results are a good deal more important where someone studied or with whom he has performed. At the same time, it has to be said that competition material is totally out of touch with the concert repertoire. Competitions are one thing but when the performer has to nourish himself and has no teacher, it turns out that some simply don't have the talent for a solo career. Are they exposed to the limelight too early and burn out? KD: At a competition, stamina is a determining criterion. In today's three or four round competitions, entrants have to perform many hours of material in a single week. This ability counts for nothing in a solo concert where they must fill the available time with quality and content. Those who are exhausted by competitions can often become great artists in concert life with no problem.

MIKLÓS SZENTHELYI, KÁLMÁN DRÁFI © ZSOLT PATAKY 84

SMSZ: Competitions are a must and the Liszt Academy must prepare its students for them. It is not enough to pamper them and flatter them and explain why one of their concerts did not succeed as it should have done. After they are awarded their diplomas, they go out into the world where there are no excuses. No one is interested whether or not you feel like playing at seven in the evening, or your mood. After I was appointed, I set about the examination material, I changed it so that students do not just fire up their engines for the examination period, but have to practise day in,

MUSIC TEACHING SUMMIT The staging (13-15 November 2014) of the Annual Congress and General Assembly of the European Association of Conservatoires (Association Européene des Conservatoires, Académies de Musique et Musikhochschulen – AEC) in the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music is an indication of the international standing and prestige of the Budapest academy. Founded in 1953 and representing nearly 300 music teaching institutions, the professional body is primarily engaged in promoting and intensifying cooperation between its members, as well as interest representation at an international level. The principal topics of the AEC conference in Budapest will be the relationship between U-Multirank, the sophisticated higher education ranking system of the European Union, and music teaching, and the links between music education and European society, as well as European tradition and global innovation. During the conference there will be an opportunity to showcase the highly successful international projects as well as the most outstanding students of the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music. The meeting closes on 15 November with a private programme commemorating the foundation of the Liszt Academy: Bartók’s Dance Suite and Kodály’s Psalmus Hungaricus will be performed by the Liszt Academy Symphony Orchestra and Alma Mater Chorus.

day out, for months on end. We terminated the practise of examiners stopping students mid-way through a piece. Students must learn whole works. Do the youngsters of today not prepare enough? MSZ: I don't want to get involved in criticism of the Bologna system but I think it is enough to point out that a non-professional subject earns as much credit as an instrumental one. KD: There is no denying that the present system does not allow the same amount of practise time that we had at our disposal. We practised from morning till night; then went to a concert. We enjoyed the good ones but could learn most from the bad ones. MSZ: I think I can detect differences in motivation and attitude. KD: Thanks to my foreign students, in my class, luckily, a special incentive has developed. My lovely Japanese students have forced the Hungarians to compete. The good news is that we have seven young students at the Liszt Academy who, like the great generation of the 70’s, may have a great international career. How are you able to able to smooth the way for your students’ careers? MSZ: The string faculty consists of ninety to ninety-five percent communal music making but what distinguishes soloists from orchestral musicians is not that one person can play the violin and the other can't. We have to give them the highest level of instrumental knowledge. But let us not forget that for us, thirty or forty years ago it was easier. There was Interkoncert, Hungaroton and the Philharmonia. They supported us and helped us to start. KD: Luckily a careers office has opened at the Liszt Academy. The team lead by Beáta Furka sorts out our international affairs, while Imre Szabó Stein's work on global communications helps spread the word. It is no coincidence that thirty people applied for our Erasmus scholarships this year, while a few years ago, only a handful did. Tamás Vajna

MONDAY 1 DECEMBER / 19.30

TUESDAY 2 DECEMBER / 19.00

GRAND HALL

SOLTI HALL

HUNGARIAN NATIONAL PHILHARMONIC Mozart: Symphony No. 38 in D major (K. 504 – ‘Prague’) Haydn: Violin Concerto in C major (Hob. VIIa:1) Haydn: Missa in Angustiis (Hob. XXII:11 – ‘Nelson Mass’) Kinga Kriszta (soprano); Kornélia Bakos (alto); László Kálmán (tenor); András Palerdi (baritone) Kristóf Baráti (violin) Hungarian National Choir (choral director: Mátyás Antal) Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra Conductor: János Kovács Haydn biographer H. C. Robbins Landon considered the D minor mass (1798) to be arguably the greatest work in the oeuvre of the composer. The composition written at the time of the Napoleonic Wars was termed in Haydn’s own catalogue ‘Mass for Troubled Times’. However, when composing the work he had no idea, although the audience listening to the first performance were very well aware, that in August of that year Admiral Nelson had achieved a strategically important victory over Napoleon at the Battle of the Nile. Not long after its genesis, therefore, the mass written at the commission of Prince Esterházy was called the ‘Nelson Mass’.Before the Haydn mass, the Hungarian National Philharmonic perform one of the finest classical symphonic works, Mozart’s D major symphony first performed in Prague, the city of his greatest successes, and a rarely played Haydn concerto for violin (in C major), the latter with solo by Kristóf Baráti who was recently awarded a Kossuth Prize. Tickets: HUF 3 000, 4 500, 6 000 Organizer: Hungarian National Philharmonic 86

JAZZ IT! MOLNÁR BENCZE QUARTET FEATURING KRISTÓF BACSÓ Bencze Molnár (piano) Illés Szabó (guitar) Marcell Gyányi (bass) Tamás Czirják (drums) Kristóf Bacsó (saxophone) He has played piano since the age of six, and his imagination, free spirit and improvisational skills soon directed him away from classical music towards jazz. Although he won a place at the jazz piano department of Western Michigan University, USA, in 2011, Bencze Molnár decided to start his studies in higher education at the jazz department of the Liszt Academy under the tutelage of Károly Binder in 2012. This is also where he met his fellow musicians for the first time. The key trait of their performance style is the extraordinary amount of energy that is released when they play together. If called on to name his primary inspirations, Bencze Molnár comes up with three names: Pat Metheny, Brad Mehldau and John Coltrane. Tickets: HUF 1 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

BENCZE MOLNÁR © KATA SCHILLER

TUESDAY 2 DECEMBER / 19.30

THURSDAY 4 DECEMBER / 19.00

FRIDAY 5 DECEMBER / 19.30

GRAND HALL

SOLTI HALL

GRAND HALL VOICE, SO CLOSE ADVENT CONCERT WITH THE ANGELICA GIRLS CHOIR Bartók: In the Village Bartók: Wedding Bartók: Cradle Song Bartók: Lads’ Dance Kodály: Fancy Boldizsár Csíky: Farewell from Kemenesalja Kocsár: Öregisten-Nagyisten Liszt: Hymn de l’enfant à son réveil Liszt: Psalm No. 137 Rachmaninoff: Vocalise Rachmaninoff: Six Choruses, op. 15 Britten: A Ceremony of Carols, op. 28

DANUBIA ORCHESTRA ÓBUDA PROKOFIEV – LOVE AND DEATH Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet – suite, op. 64 (Nos. 1–2) Shostakovich: Symphony No. 15 in A major, op. 141

LÁSZLÓ BARANYAY AND HIS STUDENTS László Baranyay, Gergely Bogányi, Tünde Csoba, Danijel Detoni, Balázs Kecskés, Erzsébet Kerek, Renáta Konyicska, Mária Kovalszki (piano)

Lúcia Megyesi Schwartz (soprano); Andrea Vigh (harp); Gergely Bogányi (piano) Angelica Girls Choir Conductor: Zsuzsanna Gráf

The 15th symphony which is Shostakovich’s last, written in just a few weeks in 1971, is one of the most perplexing orchestral works by the composer. From child-like innocence to sly irony, from touching pathos to a clear-headed structure, it mixes up the most varied characters and techniques, not to mention the most varied musical references from Rossini and Wagner to Rachmaninoff. The strange, introspective closing movement is equivalent to a single large question mark: what exactly was all this about? The final symphony, the entire oeuvre – life itself; one of the most moving works in the orchestral repertoire is conducted by Domonkos Héja, founder of the Danubia Orchestra Óbuda.

László Baranyay has been teaching at the Liszt Academy for 40 years, and in that time he has raised several generations of pianists: his workshop has given many competition winning artists to the world. As a student of Imre Ungár, Liszt Prize laureate László Baranyay was awarded his diploma in piano in 1969 before going on to do a postgraduate course at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow under the direction of professor Stanislav Neuhaus. He participated in master classes by Géza Anda and György Sebők, and he was also taught by Annie Fischer. At the concert in the Solti Hall, both ‘master and students’ introduce themselves; among the performers are Liszt and Kossuth Prize winning artists as well as recent graduates and students of the Liszt Academy.

In 1988, Zsuzsanna Gráf could have had little idea that when she established the music department and founded the Angelica Girls Choir at the Városmajor Grammar School she was on the threshold of a dazzling success story. The countless concert successes, recordings, tours abroad and all those works written specially for the choir by contemporary composers over the past quarter of a century all indicate that a person holding a position as a singing teacher in a grammar school can, with the right dedication, enthusiasm and energy, truly change the world. The choir made up of former and current students of Városmajor High School give a cross-section of their repertoire at the concert, which also involves Lúcia Megyesi Schwartz, Gergely Bogányi and president of the Liszt Academy Andrea Vigh.

Tickets: HUF 2 700, 3 500, 4 200, 4 900 Organizer: Óbudai Danubia Nonprofit Ltd.

Tickets: HUF 1 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Tickets: HUF 900, 1 300, 2 100, 3 200 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Danubia Orchestra Óbuda Conductor: Domonkos Héja

SUNDAY 7 DECEMBER / 11.00

SUNDAY 7 DECEMBER / 19.30

SOLTI HALL

GRAND HALL

LISZT KIDZ ACADEMY THE CLARINET FOR 10-15-YEAR-OLDS

Péter Szűcs (clarinet); Kristóf Bacsó (clarinet, saxophone); Péter Kiss, Áron Tálas (piano) Storyteller: Gergely Fazekas

SONG RECITALS AT THE LISZT ACADEMY IAN BOSTRIDGE AND THOMAS ADÈS

Does anyone know what grenadilla is? And palisander? We can tell you that they have something to do with Mozart’s favourite instrument. And does anyone know what Mozart’s favourite instrument was? OK, we’ll reveal all: it was the clarinet. The third concert in the series introducing instruments of the Liszt Kidz Academy for 10-15-year-old school kids (as well as parents, grandparents and great grandparents) shows off the clarinet. We find out what the instrument is capable of, why it needs a reed to sound, and what marvellous music it has inspired in the course of its 300-year history. The clarinet has had a great career not only in classical music but jazz, too (where often its cousin, the saxophone, represents it). Besides classical clarinettist Péter Szűcs, Kristóf Bacsó, professor of saxophone of the Liszt Academy, will also help us to get closer to one of the most endearing members of the woodwind family. Gergely Fazekas, assistant professor of history of music at the Academy, takes on the role of storyteller.

Ian Bostridge (tenor) Thomas Adès (piano)

Tickets: HUF 1 600 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Tickets: HUF 1 400, 2 100, 3 500, 4 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Schubert: Winterreise

The Englishman Ian Bostridge, one of the greatest tenors of our day, came to music late. His career as a singer started when he was 27, but naturally he had not wasted his time prior to this: he studied history and philosophy at Oxford and Cambridge, took his doctorate in 1990, and his thesis also appeared in book form under the title Witchcraft and its Transformations, c. 1650–1750, which is considered a standard work on demonology in the period before the Enlightenment. As far as being a singer goes, it would be possible to list at length his records, prizes, music partners and great concert halls he has appeared in. Simply unnecessary. Ian Bostridge is a representative of the dying breed of profoundly intellectual singers who simply must be heard. Especially when he sings Winterreise, Schubert’s final song cycle, with piano accompaniment by Thomas Adès, the most important British composer of the turn of the millennium.

IAN BOSTRIDGE © SIMON FOWLER

BRIDE SPINNING ALONG © JUDIT MARJAI

WEDNESDAY 10 DECEMBER / 19.00

THURSDAY 11 DECEMBER / 19.30

SOLTI HALL

GRAND HALL

FRIDAY 12 DECEMBER / 19.30

GRAND HALL

CHAMBER MUSIC, SO CLOSE STEVEN ISSERLIS & DÉNES VÁRJON ACOUSTIC, AUTHENTIC MÁRTA SEBESTYÉN FROM THE LISZT ACADEMY TO THE LISZT ACADEMY CHAMBER MUSIC, SO CLOSE CLARINET EVENING WITH WENZEL FUCHS Poulenc: Clarinet Sonata in B flat major (FP 184) Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time – 3rd movement: Abyss of Birds Bartók: Contrasts (BB 116) Schumann: Three Romances, op. 94 Brahms: Clarinet Trio in A minor, op. 114

Steven Isserlis (cello) Dénes Várjon (piano)

Austrian clarinettist Wenzel Fuchs is one of the major artists of Mozart’s favourite instrument: solo clarinettist of the Berlin Philharmonic, professor of the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin, and he regularly holds master classes all over the world, for example, in early December at the Budapest Liszt Academy; his concert in the Solti Hall is connected with this course. The clarinettist plays three key pieces of the chamber repertoire as partner of top Hungarian artists. The programme features Bartók’s trio composed for legendary jazz clarinettist Benny Goodman and the no less legendary violinist József Szigeti. The Poulenc Sonata in B flat major was also written for Goodman, although dedicated to his composer colleague Arthur Honegger. Finally, one of the seminal works of the clarinet repertoire: the late Brahms trio for clarinet, cello and piano.

Márta Sebestyén is a familiar name to the general public but few know just how strong her ties are to the Liszt Academy. Kodály once said that music education has to begin nine months before the birth, and if there is an artist in which this is certainly true it is Márta Sebestyén: she attended the Liszt Academy even as an embryo, she several times waited in the cloakroom as a tiny baby for her conductor mother to finish conducting in the Grand Hall, and she has many memories of the building and institution both as a young girl and later in life. Thus her concert in the Grand Hall is both a return and a summation inasmuch as the evening focuses on the three musical cultures that have been determining in her life: folk music, early music and chorus. In this endeavour Márta Sebestyén is assisted by the Hunyadi Old Students’ Chorus conducted by her mother, the Saint Ephraim Male Choir conducted by Tamás Bubnó, and the cream of classical and folk music performers.

This spring, English cellist phenomenon Steven Isserlis gave a full-house concert to rave reviews in the company of Dénes Várjon and Joshua Bell. This time the duo of Isserlis and Várjon are once again set to dazzle the audience, although in their case the wonder is never in respect to their external virtuosity but to a musicality that wells up from deep within, as reflected in the fascinating programme. Besides the Schumann work that starts the evening and the Brahms that closes it, the audience is in for a handful of pure rarities. French legend Gabriel Fauré’s late cello sonata (1917) is as much in need of discovery among domestic audiences as one of the most successful individuals in 20th century American music, yet now almost forgotten: Ernest Bloch and his series From Jewish Life. As for György Kurtág’s miniatures, it is always an occasion when such major artists perform these pieces, which are capable of condensing the totality of life into just a few minutes, and which bring within arm’s reach the whole universe in a single gesture.

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

Tickets: HUF 1 900, 3 100, 4 300, 5 400 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Tickets: HUF 2 900, 4 100, 5 200, 6 500 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Wenzel Fuchs (clarinet); Vilmos Szabadi (violin); Miklós Perényi (cello); Kálmán Dráfi, Narihito Mukeda (piano)

Judit Andrejszki (harpsichord); Anastasia Razvalyaeva (harp); Luca Hegedűs (dulcimer); Caius Hera (lute); Szabolcs Szamosi (organ); András Soós, Tamás Gombai (violin); Pál Havasréti (hurdy-gurdy, double bass); Zoltán Szabó (bagpipe); Choir of Former Students of Hunyadi School (chorus master: Ilona Sebestyénné Farkas); Saint Ephraim Male Choir (chorus master: Tamás Bubnó)

Schumann: Phantasiestücke, op. 73 Fauré: Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor, op. 109 Bloch: From Jewish Life – 3 Sketches for Cello & Piano György Kurtág: Hommage à John Cage György Kurtág: Gerard de Nerval György Kurtág: Schatten György Kurtág: Kroó György in memoriam Brahms: Sonata No. 2 for Cello and Piano in F major, op. 99

SEASON TICKETS FALL 2014 MUSIC, SO CLOSE

SATURDAY 13 DECEMBER / 19.30 SUNDAY 14 DECEMBER / 15.00

SUNDAY 14 DECEMBER / 19.30

MONDAY 15 DECEMBER / 19.30

GRAND HALL

SNÉTBERGER QUARTET FEAT. MARKUS STOCKHAUSEN

ALENA BAEVA, YURI BASHMET & FRANZ LISZT CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

GRAND HALL

STEVEN ISSERLIS & CONCERTO BUDAPEST Dvořák: Cello Concerto in B minor, op. 104 Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet (overture-fantasia) Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake – suite, op. 20

A hugely popular cello concerto performed by one of the most popular cellists in the world in this Concerto Budapest concert under the baton of András Keller – a day after British musician Steven Isserlis is heard in a joint chamber recital with Dénes Várjon, he steps onto the stage as soloist for Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in B minor. The work, which has been in the core repertoire of cellists since its composition, had not been recorded by Isserlis for nearly 40 years. Until last year, that is, when he finally made his own recording, immediately welcomed as a benchmark by critics. After the Dvořák work there are two Tchaikovsky classics, the musical imprints of two tragic love stories: the symphonic fantasia Romeo and Juliet and the orchestral suite of the ballet music Swan Lake.

Last December the audience of the Liszt Academy were dazzled by a stunning solo recital by Ferenc Snétberger, then a recent Kossuth Prize laureate, while this year he is on the Grand Hall stage with his quartet of truly gifted musicians. Árpád Oláh Tzumo, former holder of the Berklee Scholarship, one-time student of the Thelonious Monk Institute, needs little introduction to Hungarian audiences, similarly to József Barcza Horváth, former bass player with the Festival Orchestra and Claudio Abbadolead Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, as well as winner of numerous Jazz competitions. Toni Snétberger is the son of the leader of the quartet. He is known in Germany not only as a jazz drummer but actor, too. Their guest, Markus Stockhausen (son of composer Karlheinz Stockhausen), is an old friend and music partner of Ferenc Snétberger, who had the following to say about him: “Markus brings out of me that which I never play otherwise. This direct type of communication is something quite extraordinary.”

Tickets: HUF 3 300, 4 800, 6 500 Organizer: Concerto Budapest

Tickets: HUF 3 700, 5 100, 6 500, 7 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Steven Isserlis (cello) Concerto Budapest Conductor: András Keller

Snétberger Quartet: Ferenc Snétberger (guitar) Árpád Oláh Tzumo (piano) József Barcza Horváth (double bass) Toni Snétberger (percussion) Guest: Markus Stockhausen (trumpet)

Haydn: Symphony No. 1 in D major Mozart: Sinfonia concertante in E flat major for violin, viola and orchestra (K. 364) Grieg: String Quartet in G minor, op. 27 (arrangement for string orchestra) Alena Baeva (violin); Yuri Bashmet (viola) Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra (artistic director: János Rolla) Alena Baeva is a brilliant star in the firmament of the young violinist generation. She is not yet thirty and yet she has won a handful of major competitions (including the Wienawski competition, 2001; Paganini competition, 2004; Sendai competition, 2007). Born in Kazakhstan, she studied in Moscow. Her masters were Mstislav Rostropovich, Shlomo Mintz and Ida Haendel, among others. In May she was the guest of Concerto Budapest, but this time she comes to the Liszt Academy at the invitation of the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra. Her partner in the performance of Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante in E flat major, the finest violin-viola double concerto in music, is the legendary Yuri Bashmet, professor of the Moscow Conservatory who is equally active as viola player and conductor. Tickets: HUF 2 600, 4 500, 6 900, 8 900 Organizer: Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra

“BE IDEALISTIC!” Steven Isserlis is on stage. His trademark hairstyle emphasises his dynamic movements, but there is no hint of theatricality: his gaze reflecting maximum attention on the musical material and his partners tells all. Perhaps this sincere attention is the key to why Isserlis has a far from common circle of acquaintances: Joshua Bell, András Schiff, Thomas Adès and of course Dénes Várjon and Izabella Simon, to name just a few with whom he maintains a relationship beyond the concert podium. Looking at his concert diary, who would have thought that in his twenties he still did not know if his career would take off and that even now he gets nervous before each performance.

The cello has been your partner your entire life and you have had a close acquaintance with such aristocratic instruments as the Marquis de Coberon Stradivari. What is about the cello that gives more than the other string instruments? For me of course the sound of the cello is the most beautiful – it is much closer to the human voice than the violin. But the violin is certainly louder, there is no denying that – unless, that is, we devote huge energy in making the cello sound like a trombone, which is definitely not the area of cello playing that I am interested in. Quite the opposite: I play most works on gut strings, except for few works such as the concertos of Shostakovich and Prokofiev. I'd like to dispel the false belief that there are lots of problems with gut strings - I don't have to tune my cello more than once a day. But to fulfil the sonority of my instrument, I need the right partners, of course. From this point of view, there is no difference between a recital with a piano and a concerto with orchestra. A piano can also be incredibly loud, louder than an orchestra. The balanced sonority is not a question of magic; it is there in the score. If we mutually ensure that the textures of the work can be followed, and appear transparently, then there should be no problems with balance. From this it follows that the soloist also has to subordinate himself to the musical texture. If I take over the theme from the clarinet, for instance, then it can't be my aim to over-shine it. It is always a case of equal partners. You stated before that you regard yourself primarily as a chamber musician and that you interpret every genre from this perspective. Yes, that’s true. Without a sense of dialogue there is no sense in making music. If I play a concerto, for me that too is chamber music, an interaction with the orchestra and with the conductor. It is not my aim to tour the world with a pre-packaged production. I don't know where the pleasure would be in that. For me, enjoyment means that I can make music with my friends. I am in the lucky situation that if I have an idea for a concert, there are people I can perform it with, and I can also find the place. For example the Wigmore Hall is always open to my ideas. And that’s why I enjoy planning series devoted to one composer or period. I enjoy it from a musical point of view, but also from a social standpoint. Many of these musicians, such as Joshua, Dénes, Izabella, and others, are among my closest friends. What will you and Dénes Várjon be performing at your chamber concert in December? Ernest Bloch's From Jewish Life is a very moving work – simple but profound. There’s some Schumann – of course; I can’t live without him! Also I'm carrying on my old mission with Fauré's Sonata for cello and piano in D minor. It is surprising to me that Hungarian musicians don’t 93

“BE IDEALISTIC!”

seem to know Fauré at all, and I'm always trying to convince my friend András Schiff to discover him for himself. Fauré is an unfairly neglected composer whose chamber music is just as important as Schumann's. I love Kurtág's music – as well as the man himself – and I am regularly in touch with him by phone. Of your Hungarian affiliations, Sándor Végh particularly stands out. How did you meet him? I was only sixteen when I first participated in the International Musicians Seminar at Prussia Cove in Cornwall, a master class and chamber music festival which Sándor Végh founded. I would hardly have imagined that I would ever become the artistic director of this initiative – especially during the three years or so when I was banned from the place, for bad behaviour – ahem – but I am very happy that I have. The place has a marvellous atmosphere. I really love to spend a few weeks there every year, thinking and talking purely about music. I am glad that Sándor Végh's ideas live on there: they are the common thread linking all our highly varied professors such as András Schiff, Thomas Adès, Ferenc Rados, Rita Wagner and András Keller. Besides the festival, your life is primarily shaped by concert tours. And yet you make no secret that you are still nervous before concerts. Yes, mainly I am afraid of memory lapses which unfortunately can happen any time. In chamber music, luckily, this does not happen because I have the music in front of me. But when I have to play from memory, the knowledge that I have given several hundred concerts without problem certainly helps. An established routine and foresight also helps. For example, before an important concert I never go to bed at four in the morning! And I hope for the best. On the other hand, there are positive sides to my stage nerves; it means that I never lapse into a routine. I can never allow my attention to be anything other than a hundred per cent, and that keeps me fresh. What advice would you give to Liszt Academy students for a successful career? Don't concentrate on your career but on the music! My artistic career didn’t start thanks to competition results – I don't think much of them – but on the basis of recommendations from other musicians. I like that. But it wasn’t easy – I didn’t really start to play regularly in different countries until I was about thirty. These days I fear that many musicians concentrate too much on their career rather than their art – but perhaps this was always the case. What other message can I send in the land of Leó Weiner, Ferenc Rados, György Kurtág and Sándor Végh than: be idealistic! Péter Lorenz

DÉNES VÁRJON & Steven Isserlis © LISZT ACADEMY / BALÁZS MOHAI 94

TUESDAY 16 DECEMBER / 19.30

THURSDAY 18 DECEMBER / 19.00

GRAND HALL

SOLTI HALL

THE MAGIC FLUTE W. A. Mozart: The Magic Flute

ON THE SPOT KODÁLY 132 Zoltán Kodály: Choir works Psalmus Hungaricus Attila Kiss B. (tenor); Mihály Duffek (piano) Grand Chorus of the Hunyadi János Primary School, Budapest Youth Chorus, Kölcsey Chorus Symphony Orchestra and Alma Mater Chorus of the Liszt Academy (choir master: Csaba Somos) Conductors: Hedvig Büttner, Ágnes Gerenday, László Tamási, Ádám Medveczky Zoltán Kodály was an exemplary public figure of undisputed significance in the 20th century. He gained his diploma in composition at the Liszt Academy and in 1919 was appointed deputy director of the Academy. He continued teaching folk music there after his retirement. His alma mater pays tribute to the memory of the maestro in a traditional concert on the anniversary of his birthday. In the first half, three youth choruses rejuvenating and passing on the Kodály spirit perform a selection of Kodály choral pieces, and after the intermission it will be the turn of Psalmus Hungaricus (1923), one of his most important works, composed on the 50th anniversary of the unification of Buda, Pest and Óbuda. Tickets: HUF 1 200, 1 700, 2 800, 3 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre The Liszt Academy Symphony Orchestra is supported by the Liszt Academy Friends.

Artistic director: Éva Marton Director: András Almási-Tóth Translator: Dániel Varró Set concept: András Almási-Tóth Set: Krisztina Lisztopád Costume: MAISON MARQUISE by Bori Tóth Choral director: Csaba Somos Choreography: Tamás Juronics Sarastro: Géza Gábor Queen of the Night: Viktória Varga Tamino: Gyula Rab Pamina: Zita Szemere Papageno: Csaba Gaál Papagena: Eszter Zavaros Monostatos / First priest: Béla T. Gippert Second priest: Dávid Dani First lady: Lilla Horti Second lady: Klára Vincze Third lady: Szilvia Vörös First boy: Tamás Kiss Second boy: Barnabás Szabó Third boy: Gábor Bobori Flute: Mária Kerner Featuring: the students of the Hungarian Dance Academy Academia Hungarica Chamber Orchestra Conductor: Alpaslan Ertüngealp The Liszt Academy's production of The Magic Flute is founded on the talents of rising stars of Hungarian opera, as well as recent graduates of the Singing Department, headed by Andrea Meláth. Artistic director Éva

Marton and director and professor of stage performance András AlmásiTóth, 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. Tickets: HUF 4 500, 5 400 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre 95

THURSDAY 18 DECEMBER / 19.00

GRAND HALL

FRIDAY 19 DECEMBER / 19.00

SOLTI HALL

IN MEMORIAM ZSIGMONDY DÉNES

VILMOS SZABADI & MÁV SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

The MÁV Symphony Orchestra’s concert under the leadership of Miklós Kocsár showcases excerpts from Liszt’s principal work, Christ oratorio, Erkel’s popular Hunyadi overture and two rarely performed 20th century Hungarian compositions. The conductor’s father, Miklós Kocsár, composed Symphonic Ballad in 1994 to mark the quarter century of the establishment of the Szeged Symphony Orchestra. Originally, composer István Vántus had been given the commission, which was left uncompleted following his death, so Miklós Kocsár used the Vántus framework when writing his own composition. Before Kocsár’s work, however, the audience are given a recital of a masterpiece with the solo played by Liszt Prize winner and two-times MIDEM award winner Vilmos Szabadi: the Violin Concerto in C minor by Ernő Dohnányi, written in post-Romantic style, the first piece completed in 1950 after the artist settled in the US.

He was the student of Géza Kresz at the Liszt Academy, but considered his most important teacher to be Leó Weiner, who taught chamber music. He quit Hungary during the war in 1944, and pursued an important career as concert violinist in Germany from 1946. Together with his pianist wife, he played the entire chamber repertoire and travelled the world. It is not only in the unforgettable concerts and recordings that the memory of Dénes Zsigmondy is kept alive, but in many of his students, too. He started teaching at the age of 50, partly in American university departments and partly in master classes. His students pay tribute to the unforgettable ‘Zsiga’ who died this year at the age of 92: Isabelle Faust, the KokasKelemen couple, the Pusker siblings, Gergely Kuklis, concertmaster of the Hungarian National Philharmonic, and Pál Jász of Concerto Budapest. In an interview Dénes Zsigmondy told a story typical of the man. He was in Budapest with his wife in the 1960s, performing in the Liszt Academy. On the night before the concert he visited Kodály. “He asked me about everything, about books, and I knew everything but I had never read anything. So we had a good chat. And then he looked at me and told me sternly: ‘you must read’. The following day, he came down to see us in the dressing room in the interval, he hugged us both and simply said: ‘You don’t need to read anything’.”

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

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

Erkel: Hunyadi László – overture Dohnányi: Violin Concerto No. 2 in C minor, op. 43 Miklós Kocsár: Symphonic Ballad Liszt: Christ – oratorio (excerpts) Vilmos Szabadi (violin) MÁV Symphony Orchestra Conductor: Balázs Kocsár

Isabelle Faust, Katalin Kokas, Júlia Pusker, Ágnes Pusker, Barnabás Kelemen, Gergely Kuklis, Pál Jász (violin); Lajos Rozmán (clarinet); Izabella Simon, Dénes Várjon (piano)

DÉNES ZSIGMONDY © ANDREA FELVÉGI

FRIDAY 19 DECEMBER / 19.00

SATURDAY 20 DECEMBER / 16.00

THURSDAY 22 DECEMBER / 19.00

GRAND HALL

SOLTI HALL

CHRISTMAS CONCERT ANDREA VIGH HARP RECITAL

MR CHILDREN’S CHOIR CHRISTMAS CONCERT

Bruch: Kol Nidrei, op. 47 Granados: Spanish Dance Hasselmans: La Source Durand: Waltz, op. 83 R. Strauss: Morgen Puccini: Tosca – Tosca’s Prayer Puccini: Gianni Schicchi – Lauretta’s Aria Tournier: Au matin Smetana-Trenecek: The Moldau Fantasy, op. 43 Vecsey: Valse triste Paganini: La Campanella Kreisler: Liebesleid Debussy: Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp (L. 137) Debussy: Suite bergamasque – Prélude, Clair de lune Ravel: Prelude and allegro

Nativity folk plays, choral works by European, primarily Hungarian, composers, solo instrumental works

Andrea Vigh (harp); Ilona Tokody (soprano); Béla Drahos (flute); Zsolt Szatmári (clarinet); Vilmos Szabadi (violin); Csaba Onczay (cello) Nyári String Quartet: László Nyári, Géza Szajkó (violin); Kálmán Dráfi (viola); István Balázs (cello) Few have done as much to make the harp an autonomous concert instrument in Hungary as Andrea Vigh. She received a degree from the Liszt Academy in 1986, in 2009 she was awarded a doctorate, she has released 10 solo albums (including several that have sold in their tens of thousands), she established the Gödöllő Harp Festival in 1999, is regularly asked to sit on juries for international competitions and festivals, and has been president of the Liszt Academy since 2013. This Christmas concert features solo harp works, harp chamber music and transcriptions. Tickets: HUF 3 000, 3 500, 4 000, 5 000, 6 000 Organizer: Jakobi Ltd.

Zsuzsanna Arany (piano) MR Children’s Choir Conductor: László Matos, Sándor Kabdebó, Klára Brebovszky

THE MAGIC FLUTE W. A. Mozart: The Magic Flute

Awaiting the coming of Christmas with the Hungarian Radio Children’s Choir. There could be no better programme than this for the final weekend of Advent, because just to listen to this legendary, long-established and, of course, constantly renewed ensemble is in itself an uplifting, celebratory event. In the sixty years since their foundation in 1954 by Valéria Botka and László Csányi, the choir have travelled the world, proving their greatness as much through participation in contemporary première of works as in recitals of Gregorian or Renaissance works. The Christmas programme not only includes nativity folk plays but vocal compositions by Hungarian and other European composers. And their voices will resound through the hall since anyone who has heard the Hungarian Radio Children’s Choir knows that their sound has maintained its elemental force and authenticity even over many generations. This is due in large part to Gabriella Thész, who oversaw the ensemble for so many years and truly shaped its personality, as well as the current conductors of the choir, László Matos and Sándor Kabdebó, who have followed in her footsteps.

Tickets: HUF 2 000, 3 000, 4 000 Students and concessions: HUF 1400, 2100, 2800 Organizer: MR Music Ensembles

Further details on page 96.

Sarastro: Géza Gábor Queen of the Night: Viktória Varga Tamino: Gyula Rab Pamina: Zita Szemere Papageno: Csaba Gaál Papagena: Eszter Zavaros Monostatos / First priest: Béla T. Gippert Second priest: Dávid Dani First lady: Lilla Horti Second lady: Klára Vincze Third lady: Szilvia Vörös First boy: Tamás Kiss Second boy: Barnabás Szabó Third boy: Gábor Bobori Flute: Mária Kerner Featuring: the students of the Hungarian Dance Academy Academia Hungarica Chamber Orchestra Conductor: Alpaslan Ertüngealp

Tickets: HUF 4 500, 5 400 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre 97

SUNDAY 21 DECEMBER / 19.30

SUNDAY 28 DECEMBER / 19.30

GRAND HALL

PURE BAROQUE THE KING’S CONSORT Händel: Messiah (HWV 56) Lorna Anderson (soprano); Catherine Hopper (alto); Joshua Ellicott (tenor); David Wilson-Johnson (bass) The King’s Consort Conductor: Robert King

THE KING’S CONSORT © KEITH SAUNDERS

Twenty-four days. This is how long it took Handel to write the 259-page manuscript of the Messiah in August 1741. Of course, this is the least remarkable fact because Handel generally worked at this speed anyway. It is far more exciting to see how the work, presented at a charity concert in Dublin, became a cult work even in Handel’s lifetime, and went as far as mega performances, bringing together several thousand singers and musicians in the 19th century. This time the performance at the Liszt Academy revives the original circumstances in a historically informed production featuring legendary representative of English early music movement Robert King and his ensemble. The King's Consort, founded by King as a student at Cambridge in 1980, are a hugely significant early music formation in the UK; they have released ninety albums, sold more than one million copies, toured extensively and made dozens of discoveries in musicology. Under the leadership of Robert King, the ensemble has played all Handel’s major works, so their performance of the Messiah is a benchmark: a must for early music fans. Tickets: HUF 4 800, 6 500, 9 200, 11 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

BENKÓ DIXIELAND BAND BRING ME SUNSHINE! Guests: Myrtill Micheller, Tamás Berki (vocal) Benkó Dixieland Band: Sándor Benkó (clarinet, band leader); Iván Nagy (trombone, vocal); Béla Szalóky (trumpet, trombone, vocal); Vilmos Halmos (piano, vocal); Gábor Kovacsevics (drums); Miklós Csikós (bass); Pál Gáspár (banjo, vocal) You’d 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 Benkó Dixieland Band, and the words of praise came from none other than former US president Ronald Reagan. The story of the formation headed up by clarinettist Sándor Benkó is stunning even when told in numbers: 57 years of activity, 81 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. Two great singers, Myrtil Micheller and Berki Tamás, are their guests for this end-of-year concert. Tickets: HUF 6 000, 8 000, 10 000, 12 000 Organizer: Philharmonia Hungary Concert and Festival Agency

PERISCOPE © IMRE DRÉGELY

WHAT IS BAROQUE? “Baroque music is that in which the harmony is confused, charged with modulations and dissonances; the melody is harsh and little natural, intonation difficult and the movement constrained.” This is how JeanJacques Rousseau defined Baroque music in his musical lexicon published in 1768. Rousseau believed the term came from the Italian barocco, which in academic logic is applied to a forced syllogism (e.g. every A = B; some C ≠ B; therefore some C ≠ A). Others preferred an etymology rooted in the Spanish barueco which occurs in the specialist vocabulary of the pearl fishers and is used to describe pearls of bizarre shape. Whatever the explanation – be it something forced or with bizarre contours – the 18th century applied it to things that were exaggerated or exceeded their boundaries. It only became a neutral denotation of an era during the 19 th century. Initially it was used for 16th century music and it is only for the past fifty years or so that it has signified the repertoire from the hundred and fifty years following 1600. These days the word Baroque is not just a term for a period in music history but functions as one of the most successful brands of classical music. This brand has undergone serious metamorphoses in recent decades, primarily due to the interest in historically informed performance practice (HIP). Through the tireless discoveries of early music specialists, the wider audience now knows that Handel wrote not just popular oratorios but also operas, that Bach's familiar passions are none other than scaled-up versions of his previously unknown cantatas and that Purcell composed much more than Dido and Aeneas. But perhaps more important than the broadening of the repertoire is that HIP reinterpreted the Baroque portion of the major repertoire: Handel and Bach removed their powdered wigs and became our contemporaries. So why has Baroque music become so successful at the turn of the Millennium? Perhaps because it unites within it the finest traits of romanticism, with its pathos, and 20th century new music, with its often severe structures: Baroque music is emotional but keeps its passions in check. It is constructed according to clear structures which the listener can follow. And it leads us back to the fundamentals of our modern world view. In the same way that the rationalism of Descartes and the laws of Newtonian physics still shape our everyday thinking, the Baroque composers, who date from this same era, shape our musical thinking. And although it may be that HIP is really not about the 17 th and 18 th century but the present, this is precisely why it has its effect: it makes it clear that Baroque works are contemporary in the same way as compositions by Steve Reich, David Lang or György Kurtág are. Gergely Fazekas 100

ENTRY IN THE GUEST BOOK OF THE LISZT ACADEMY PEKKA KUUSISTO (10 JUNE 2014) 101

MONDAY 29 DECEMBER / 19.30

TUESDAY 30 DECEMBER / 19.30

WEDNESDAY 31 DECEMBER / 22.45

GRAND HALL

PURE BAROQUE CONCERTO ARMONICO BUDAPEST Händel: Concerto grosso in D major, op. 6/5 C. P. E. Bach: Harpsichord Concerto in D major (Wq 11) Vivaldi: Violin Concerto in B minor (RV 387 – ‘Per Signora Anna Maria’) J. S. Bach: Orchestral Suite in B minor (BWV 1067)

Music of Transylvanian meadows, with songs and dances of Ördöngösfüzes, Búza, Magyarszovát and Szék Ági Szalóki (vocals); Gergely Koncz, Balázs Vizeli (violin); László Pintyő Mester (viola); Róbert Doór (double bass); Abdulwahab Nadia, Gábor Valach (dance)

Formed in 1983 by final year students of the Liszt Academy, Concerto Armonico Budapest is one of the most exciting period ensembles in Hungary. Of the many album recordings by the ensemble, the series comprising all Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach’s keyboard concertos (BIS Records) is of outstanding importance, and was greeted by critics worldwide as a sensation. Their pre-New Year concert in the Liszt Academy, the second since its reopening, features a harpsichord concerto from the Bach son, born three hundred years ago this year, alongside the Suite in B minor by Johann Sebastian (with flute solo by Liszt laureate János Bálint) and the Vivaldi concerto for violin in the same key, dedicated to one of his students (solo by concert master Márta Ábrahám). And to ensure that Händel is not omitted from this pure Baroque line-up, the concert opens with his Concerto grosso in D major complete with dramatic French overture.

It is just twenty years ago that a fragile girl made her debut at a Besh o droM concert; such energy flowed from her presence that it nearly caused a power blackout. Since then she has recorded many albums and achieved great success, she has tried her hand at jazz, at singing Katalin Karády, a good few children’s – or more accurately, family – albums, she has collected numerous prizes and yet she still remains the fragile bundle of energy she always was. For her Liszt Academy concert the spotlight turns to the folk musician facet of Ági Szalóki, because she is this, too, and indeed, perhaps this is at her core: “between 1998 and 2002, as singer with the Ökrös band, I was able to experience in many concerts from San Francisco to Beijing how good it is when just two violins, a viola and double bass play together, combined with an Ördöngösfüzes melody: Bárcsak ez az éjszaka Szentgyörgynapig tartana … When I sang this, I always wondered what it would be like if we really could stop the night, the moment or feeling that we enjoyed: watching starlings on the shore of the Balaton, walking through a forest, chatting over a glass of wine or pálinka.”

Tickets: HUF 1 400, 2 100, 3 500, 4 900 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Tickets: HUF 1 900, 3 100, 4 300, 5 400 Organizer: Liszt Academy Concert Centre

Márta Ábrahám (violin), János Bálint (flute), Miklós Spányi (harpsichord) Concerto Armonico Budapest (concert master: Márta Ábrahám, artistic director: Miklós Spányi)

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ACOUSTIC, AUTHENTIC GREAT CHRISTMAS FOLK MUSIC WITH ÁGI SZALÓKI

AMADINDA PERCUSSION GROUP & GÁBOR PRESSER NEW YEAR’S EVE CONCERT Gábor Presser (piano, voice) Amadinda Percussion Ensemble: Károly Bojtos, Aurél Holló, Zoltán Rácz, Zoltán Váczi The New Year’s Eve concert featuring Gábor Presser and The Amadinda Percussion Group (celebrating their 30th anniversary) is so closely associated with the Liszt Academy that you’d be forgiven for feeling that the closure of the main building on Liszt Ferenc Square for renovation had stopped the years from passing. Of course, after 2009, the end-ofyear concert (first organized in 2001) shifted to the Palace of Arts, so there was no need to halt the wheel of time. But now we can once again enjoy this remarkable celebration that recognizes no borders between genres in its ‘original setting’. A word of warning, however: book early for the concert that covers everything from traditional percussion music through Bach and Johann Strauss to Presser numbers; this is certainly not a New Year’s party that you can delay making a decision on until the last minute. Tickets: HUF 10 000, 12 500, 15 000, 17 500; VIP tickets: HUF 25 000 Organizer: Amadinda Percussion Ensemble

CULTURA NO 20 © MÁRIA PECSICS

A SHOWER OF PRIZES FOR THE RENOVATED LISZT ACADEMY RED DOT, Hipnózis, Media Design, Arany Penge, Interior Designer of the Year, With Fresh Eyes photography competition: the Liszt Academy has been renovated inside and out and its new communications portfolio has also won plaudits in its first season.

In December 2013, the competition jury at Hungary's prestigious advertising and media market's Media Design competition, founded by the Kreatív Group, bestowed awards on the Liszt Academy's new-style individual evening programme leaflets and concert magazine. The communications department of the institution and the creative agency of the Liszt Academy won two prizes for the publications created and executed by Allison Advertising: the second prize for the evening concert programme notes in the “brochures” category, and the third prize for the 2013 concert magazine in the category for “magazines published monthly or less”. The competition jury of Media Design, founded by the Kreativ Group, warmly praised the world class standard of the concert magazines and programme brochures and their rich visual representations of the University and Concert Centre tandem. “The new profile of the Liszt Academy and the publication structure represents peerless quality”, said Balázs Román, editor in chief of Hungary's premier advertising and media market publication Kreativ magazine at the prize-giving ceremony on December 11th at the Roham Bar. The jury also felt that the Liszt Academy profile was a potential prize-winner in the blue-ribbon category, which looks at the entire portfolio of both printed and internet publications. But according to competition rules, the Media Design judging panel could only assess those websites which were launched before September 30, 2013, while zeneakademia.hu only went live on the day the Liszt Academy was re-opened on 22 October. As Balázs Román said, because of the Liszt Academy, the professional jury who ranked nearly five-hundred entrants decided to expand the competition in the future with a new category for comprehensive institutional profile. Media Design was originally the championship for magazine publishers, advertising and media agencies, and companies specialising in web and mobile design. Thus the Liszt Academy defeated the majority of its competitors on their home turf.

RÓBERT GÁCS, IMRE SZABÓ STEIN, GERGŐ CUBA 104

In early May 2014, the publications of the newly resplendent Liszt Academy were shortlisted in three categories of the Hypnosis Creative Advertising Competition, and a few weeks later, the Academy enjoyed success at Hungary's most prestigious competition in the creative industry, the Arany Penge: the evening programme leaflet series and the concert magazine won a prize in the field dominated by the most innovative advertising material of multi-national companies. Howard Smiedt, creative director of Geometry Global, one of the world's largest international advertising agencies, chaired the jury and from several hundred entries, two published editions of the Liszt Academy's Concert Magazine were shortlisted for the Arany Penge “design solutions- catalogue/ diary” category. Ultimately the jury decided not to award any of its iconic

razor-blade statues in this category, but the jury found that the Liszt Academy's premium publication for its first season, with its notes, interviews, portraits and specialised essays – a genre now sadly absent from Hungarian cultural publications – was the best in 2014. The Liszt Academy did win an iconic razor-blade statue in another category. The panel of leading industry figures in Hungary awarded the Bronze Blade for the internationally unique evening programme leaflets, printed on environmentally friendly paper. These pocket sized, intimate publications, illustrated with contemporary world-class book graphics and containing personal essays reflecting on the concert, beat advertising films and publications published by vastly larger creative organisations. The building itself also won prestigious professional acknowledgement when in June 2014, the interior designer of the Liszt Academy reconstruction, Éva Magyari, was awarded the Interior Designer of the Year award. Founded by Péter Laki in 1998, this is awarded annually by the interior design section of the Hungarian Chamber of Architects for work that the expert jury regards as exceptional. For the first time in its sixteen-year history, the jury shared the prize between Éva Magyari, the interior designer for the main building of the Liszt Academy and Erzsébet Gothárd, interior designer for the Vigadó reconstruction. The Liszt Academy was also a winner in a photography competition. With Fresh Eyes was announced as part of the Hungarian Year of Architecture series and the photograph presenting the principal building of the newly renovated Liszt Academy won the audience prize. As part of the competition called Monuments with Fresh Eyes announced for the Ybl bi-centenary celebrations, those who registered for the competition created their competition material during photographic walks in Kossuth Square, the Várkert Bazár, the Ludovika main building, the Pest Vigadó and the Liszt Academy building. The jury as well as the general public judged the photographers' work in each separate building. The winner of the competition audience prize was a photograph of the Liszt Academy. The news about Liszt Academy’s corporate identity receiving Europe’s most prestigious design award, the Red Dot among the best applicants of 2014/2015 reached us shortly after finalizing this publication.

BRONZE BLADE

Online versions of our award-winning magazines and programme notes can be found in our Liszterium column of our homepage at zeneakademia.hu/liszterium. 105

CONCERTS AT THE OLD ACADEMY OF MUSIC LISZT MUSEUM MATINEE CONCERTS

6 SEPTEMBER 11.00

BARNABÁS BEÉRI (PIANO)

13 SEPTEMBER 11.00

WINNERS OF THE EDE ZATHURECZKY VIOLIN COMPETITION

20 SEPTEMBER 11.00

ISTVÁN GULYÁS (PIANO)

27 SEPTEMBER 11.00 NYÁRI STRING QUARTET

4 OCTOBER 11.00

11 OCTOBER 11.00 ESZTER PERÉNYI, GYULA KISS AND THEIR STUDENTS

18 OCTOBER LISZT DAY: GERGELY KOVÁCS, LÁSZLÓ VÁRADI (PIANO), FOLK

25 OCTOBER 11.00 TIEN HSIEH (PIANO)

8 NOVEMBER 11.00 ANDREA VIGH AND THE STUDENTS

Z SOLT MEDGYESI, MIHÁLY BOROS, KÁRMEN STEPHANY BOATENG (PIANO)

MUSIC DEPARTMENT OF LISZT ACADEMY, PÉTER NAGY (PIANO)

OF LISZT ACADEMY'S HARP DEPARTMENT

15 NOVEMBER 11.00 GÁBOR SZEMENDRI (PIANO)

22 NOVEMBER 11.00 CHIYAN WONG (PIANO)

29 NOVEMBER 11.00 ALEKSANDRA KULS (VIOLIN)

6 DECEMBER 11.00 WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES YOUNG PIANISTS

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

13 DECEMBER 11.00 PÉTER ERDEI AND THE NEW LISZT FERENC CHAMBER CHOIR

20 DECEMBER 11.00 ANNA KIJANOWSKA (PIANO)

ENCOUNTERS WITH FERENC LISZT: JOINT CONCERTS OF THE LISZT FERENC SOCIETY AND LISZT ACADEMY

1 OCTOBER 18.00

5 NOVEMBER 18.00

L ISZT AND THE HARP: ANDREA VIGH AND HER STUDENTS Featuring: Angelica Girls Choir (artistic director: Zsuzsanna Gráf) Introduction: Mária Eckhardt

3 DECEMBER 18.00

OVELTIES AROUND LISZT’S PIANO SONATA IN B FLAT MINOR N Jenő Jandó (piano) Introduction: Mária Eckhardt

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THE SACRED PIANO MUSIC OF LISZT I stván Lantos, Mira Nagy, Fülöp Ránki (piano) Introduction: István Lantos

More details and ticket info: www.lisztacademy.hu

THE “KONZI” We could describe the Béla Bartók Conservatoire as the Liszt Academy's eldest daughter. In truth, it was founded some thirty years before the Liszt Academy. but since 1973 it has operated under the Liszt University (formerly Liszt College). To this day, it is the most successful centre for school-age musical teaching in Hungary.

Officially it is the “Béla Bartók Music Secondary School, the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music University Teacher Training School”, and deserves special mention because its legal predecessor, Hungary's oldest middle school, was formed in 1840 with the encouragement of the Pest-Buda Music Making Society. The school began with seventy five students and faculties in singing, composition and chorus and it was the first official institution to train Hungarian professional musicians. Its foundation was urged by Ferenc Liszt, who contributed to the costs of setting up the “National Conservatoire” using the revenue from two of his concerts. Just ten years later, the institution boasted 200 students and offered instrumental faculties (piano, violin, cello, flute and clarinet.) The school was what we would now recognise as a foundation-school; it assumed the name “National Music School” in 1867. Before the founding of the Music Academy (and until the launch of tertiary Hungarian music education in 1875), it was the leading workshop for Hungarian music teaching. In the 1920s it temporarily lost its independence and finally came under state control in the upheavals of 1948 as a school with a grammar-school branch. This was when it was given the name of State Conservatoire. From 1954 one of its tasks was to train teachers for music schools. In 1966 teacher training was taken over by the Liszt Academy, along with the building in Semmelweis Street, so the renamed Béla Bartók Music School moved to Nagymező Street. In 1973 it came under the supervision of the Liszt Academy as a teacher-training school (it is no coincidence that the older generation still refer to the Semmelweis Street teacher-training institute as the “Konzi”, which operated independently until the introduction of the Bologna system.) Grammar school education began again with the political changes and its monopoly as an institution was ended when soon afterwards two new music technical secondary schools opened in Budapest (there are now eight such institutions in the capital.) Despite the many twists and turns in the history of this institution – which currently has more than 300 students in 23 faculties – it has lived up to Minister Eötvös's wishes, and today occupies a supreme position among Hungary's institutions. And what’s the secret of its success? Dr Szabolcs Benkő, who has headed the school since 2012, indicates its future path: “Its intellectual environment and teaching staff are unique in the country; and the institution boasts outstanding competition results. In the past this would have been enough. But now there’s competition for students, and if students have a choice it is not always the professional aspects they take into consideration; they’re also interested in whether they can borrow an instrument or there’s a hall of residence with computer access and so on. This institution, now over 170 years old, has to meet the challenges of the modern era to be able to fulfil its leading role in the midst of change while living up to its traditions.”

THE “KONZI” 107

LISZT KIDZ ACADEMY – YOUTH PROGRAMMES AT THE LISZT ACADEMY Every child is born with music: there is no babe untouched by the music of Mozart or Bach. Or indeed Gangnam style, depending on what they encounter at home. The youth programmes of the Liszt Academy naturally aim to acquaint youngster, not with the values of pop culture, but with the three musical worlds which shape the institutions teaching and concert life: namely classical music, folk music and jazz.

The objective of the Liszt Academy's youth programmes, under the codename of ”Kidz Academy”, is not to nurture musicians but to create the audiences of the future. For those children who hear the Goldberg Variations at home, we will show them further wonders from the infinite universe of great music. For those who grow up in the shadow of Lady Gaga, we guide them to other musical lands. One of the pillars of the Liszt Academy's youth programmes is the weekly small activity groups for those aged 6-10. We show the children various musical genres and forms, they encounter different instruments (which they can most definitely touch!) and we also demonstrate how concerts work. We have built a scale model of the Grand Hall from LEGO and the children can play with LEGO figures, seeing where the artist goes, how they prepare in the dressing room while the audience is gathering and so on. The concert series taking place in the Solti Hall addresses the 10-15 year age group which with piano, strings and clarinet teaches children and demonstrates what these instruments can do in different musical styles, in classical music, jazz or even folk traditions. (Details are on page 109 and earlier pages of the magazine Many think that music is pure entertainment. They would be wrong. It teaches the essence of man, and it is almost never too early to start the acquaintance. As Shakespeare put it: ”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.”

In autumn 2014 between September 20 and December 20, we will hold the small group of “Kidz Academy” activities in the Liszt Academy Ferenc Liszt Square building each Saturday from 10.00. The activities are aimed at the 6–10 age group. Parents cannot participate in the activities but they are welcome to sit in on the dress rehearsal for the grand hall concert (so long as the performers have no objection). Further details: http://zeneakademia.hu/junior Tickets: HUF 900

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LISZTACADEMY.HU

LISZT KIDZ ACADEMY FOR 10–15 YEAR-OLDS CONCERT SERIES IN THE SOLTI HALL

5 OCTOBER 2014 THE PIANO 16 NOVEMBER 2014 THE STRINGS 7 DECEMBER 2014 THE CLARINET CONCERT IN THE GRAND HALL

8 NOVEMBER 2014 THE ORCHESTRA

FRIENDS OF THE LISZT ACADEMY For nearly ten years, the president of the Friends of the Liszt Academy was Péter Marton, who as an emigré became a successful businessman in Germany. The first influential members of the Friends were largely people like him who had been socialised in the traditions of the Western world.

In 2007, Vilmos Szabó, managing director of the Hungarian subsidiary of the leading international consultancy firm Korn Ferry, took over the presidential post, demonstrating that a generation of Western-minded businessmen had now emerged since the change of system, many of whom were committed to the values of education and culture. Such people are now strongly represented among the leading supporters of the present Friends of the Liszt Academy. The organisation's principal activity is aiding the young talents of the Liszt Academy, primarily in the realm of realising their artistic projects. But in recent years, the Friends have demonstrated they want to do far more. By implementing more ambitious plans they have reinforced the Liszt Academy brand and given the Friends a more prominent character. For example, in the year of the Liszt bi-centenary, three beautiful books were published under the aegis of The Friends, drawing on the intellectual talents of the Liszt Academy in collaboration with the Helikon Publishing House. The figures speak for themselves. In 2013 they supported the Liszt Academy with more than 46 million forints. Last year, the Friends offered 18 million forints for student scholarships, 1.4 million for masterclasses abroad and other international projects, and they also purchased musical instruments to the value of 26 million forints. In Paris, they succeeded in acquiring an Erard Piano which possibly Liszt himself played. It once belonged to Caroline de Saint-Criq, whose father – then the French Minister of Commerce – banned the young genius from his house putting an end to their blossoming romantic attachment of which he disapproved. The instrument now enriches the collection of the Liszt Museum. Another unique project began with the purchase of the upright piano on which György Kurtág and his wife Márta gave their unforgettable concert performances of works by Bach and Kurtág. A further interesting feature of this piano, with its expansive yet intimate tone, is that it is fitted with an ingenious device that faithfully records everything played on it. The “Kurtág piano” belonging to the Friends was placed in the Budapest Music Centre where other famous or aspiring artists may now use it. The Friends also purchased a valuable Nemessányi master violin for the Liszt Academy. The instrument, known as the “Hungarian Stradivarius” was made by Félix Sámuel Nemessányi, one of the finest instrument makers of his era. Last year, the Liszt Academy's arsenal of instruments was augmented by three guitars made in Japan, which the Friends purchased at the recommendation of Professor József Eötvös. From autumn 2014, thanks to collaboration with the Friends, Erste Bank Hungary Zrt will be sponsoring the concert series of the Liszt Academy's Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra will be conducted on 23 November 2014 by Zoltán Kocsis, on 15 April 2015 by György Vashegyi and on 18 May 2015 by Ken-Ichiro Kobayashi. The orchestra, with its annually changing line-up of students, will have its future artistic development aided by the Friends as well.

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2015 SPRING – PREVIEW 7 FEBRUARY 2015

BRODSKY QUARTET

13 FEBRUARY 2015

HARMONIA CAELESTIS BALÁZS MÁTÉ & AURA MUSICALE

5 MARCH 2015

ZEHETMAIR QUARTET

18 MARCH 2015

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY & MANCHESTER CAMERATA

27 MARCH 2015

ANDRÁS KELLER, CSABA KLENYÁN, DÉNES VÁRJON

1 APRIL 2015

ST JOHN PASSION – PURCELL CHOIR, ORFEO ORHCESTRA, GYÖRGY VASHEGYI

7 MAY 2015

DÉNES VÁRJON & CONCERTO BUDAPEST

15 – 16 MAY 2015

KLÁRA WÜRTZ & KRISTÓF BARÁTI BEETHOVEN-SONATA–MARATHON

19 MAY 2015

JORDI SAVALL & LE CONCERT DES NATIONS J. S. BACH: MUSIKALISCHES OPFER

24 MAY 2015

MAGDALENA KOŽENÁ & MITSUKO UCHIDA

31 MAY 2015

BEETHOVEN-EVENING WITH PÉTER FRANKL & ISTVÁN VÁRDAI 111

LISZT ACADEMY GRAND HALL

JORDI SAVALL &

LE CONCERT DES NATIONS J. S. BACH: MUSIKALISCHES OPFER

19.05.2015.

LISZT ACADEMY GRAND HALL

VILDE FRANG & THE

AMSTERDAM SINFONIETTA 24.02.2015.

CONCERT CHRONOLOGY Concerts organized by Liszt Academy Concert Centre Hosted concerts Classical Jazz Opera Folk Junior THURSDAY 4 SEPTEMBER 2014 / 19.30

OPENING CONCERT OF THE PABLO CASALS INTERNATIONAL CELLO COMPETITION Page 8

SATURDAY 6 SEPTEMBER 2014 / 20.30

GIORA FEIDMAN & GITANES BLONDES – VERY KLEZMER Page 8

SUNDAY 7 SEPTEMBER 2014 / 18.30

BUDAPEST GYPSY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA AND FRIENDS Page 8

MONDAY 29 SEPTEMBER 2014 / 19.30

FINALS OF THE 1ST INTERNATIONAL ÉVA MARTON SINGING COMPETITION

ZOLTÁN KOCSIS & ZUGLÓ PHILHARMONICS BUDAPEST

Page 16

SUNDAY 21 SEPTEMBER 2014 / 19.30

PURE BAROQUE HOLLAND BAROQUE SOCIETY Page 16

MONDAY 22 SEPTEMBER 2014 / 19.00

ISTVÁN LAJKÓ PIANO RECITAL DLA DOCTORAL CONCERT Page 20

TUESDAY 23 SEPTEMBER 2014 / 19.00

HELEN DONATH & MÁV SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Page 20

WEDNESDAY 24 SEPTEMBER 2014 / 19.30

HOMMAGE À GYÖRGY LÁNG HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL CONCERT Page 20

THURSDAY 25 SEPTEMBER 2014 / 19.00

SATURDAY 13 SEPTEMBER 2014 / 19.30

ACOUSTIC, AUTHENTIC GÁZSA & ÜSZTÜRÜ

GALA CONCERT OF THE PABLO CASALS INTERNATIONAL CELLO COMPETITION

THURSDAY 25 SEPTEMBER 2014 / 19.30

Page 10

SUNDAY 14 SEPTEMBER 2014 / 18.00

ZUGLÓ PHILHARMONICS 60

Page 10

TUESDAY 16 SEPTEMBER 2014 / 19.30

DANUBIA ORCHESTRA ÓBUDA VÁSÁRY – HELL AND HEAVEN Page 12 WEDNESDAY 17 SEPTEMBER 2014 / 19.30

SOAVE – PIANO CONCERT OF WORKS BY FERENC LISZT Page 12

THURSDAY 18 SEPTEMBER 2014 / 19.30

MVM CONCERTS - THE PIANO YEVGENY SUDBIN PIANO RECITAL Page 12

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SATURDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2014 / 18.00

Page 21

RIVKA GOLANI & THE BUDAFOK DOHNÁNYI ORCHESTRA Page 21

FRIDAY 26 SEPTEMBER 2014 / 19.30

BEYOND MUSIC… TAMÁS VÁSÁRY MUSICAL CONVERSATIONS Page 22

SATURDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2014 / 19.30

AKIKO SUWANAI AND CONCERTO BUDAPEST Page 22

SUNDAY 28 SEPTEMBER 2014 / 19.30

AKIKO SUWANAI & CONCERTO BUDAPEST Page 22

Page 26

TUESDAY 30 SEPTEMBER 2014 / 19.30

ACOUSTIC, AUTHENTIC VUJICSICS 40 Page 26

WEDNESDAY 1 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.30

CHAMBER MUSIC, SO CLOSE ERNŐ KÁLLAI & JÁNOS BALÁZS Page 30

THURSDAY 2 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.30

ANOUSHKA SHANKAR CLASSICAL INDIAN RAGA Page 30 FRIDAY 3 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.00

FISCHER ANNIE 100 THE NEXT GENERATION Page 30 SATURDAY 4 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.00

FISCHER ANNIE 100 THE COLLEAGUES Page 31 SUNDAY 5 OCTOBER 2014 / 11.00

LISZT KIDZ ACADEMY THE PIANO Page 31

SUNDAY 5 OCTOBER 2014 / 11.00

UNDERSTANDABLE MUSIC BUDAFOK DOHNÁNYI ORCHESTRA GLOBAL CITIZENS OF HUNGARIAN MUSIC: ANNIE FISCHER Page 31

SUNDAY 5 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.00

TALENT OBLIGE ERZSÉBET SELELJO SAXOPHONE SONATAS Page 36 SUNDAY 5 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.30

FISCHER ANNIE 100 PÉTER FRANKL & TAMÁS VÁSÁRY Page 36

MONDAY 6 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.30

SUNDAY 12 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.30

WEDNESDAY 22 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.30

IN PRAISE OF CIVIL COURAGE KARL JENKINS–JÁNOS ARANY: THE BARDS OF WALES

LÁSZLÓ FENYŐ & THE NEW HUNGARIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

ON THE SPOT – DEPARTMENT OF KEYBOARD AND CHORD INSTRUMENTS

MONDAY 13 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.30

FRIDAY 24 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.45

CAFe BUDAPEST GROUP 180 – 35 YEARS

Page 50

Page 37 TUESDAY 7 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.30

GAVRIEL LIPKIND & FRANZ LISZT CHAMBER ORCHESTRA Page 37

THURSDAY 9 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.00

Page 41

Page 44

WEDNESDAY 15 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.30

Page 49

BUDAPEST FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA

SATURDAY 25 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.45

BUDAPEST FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA

HUNGARIAN NATIONAL PHILHARMONIC IN MEMORIAM FISCHER ANNIE

Page 50

Page 38

Page 44

THURSDAY 9 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.30

FRIDAY 17 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.30

HUNGARIAN NATIONAL CHOIR FROM BARTÓK TO EÖTVÖS

JAZZ IT! KÁLMÁN OLÁH EUROPEANAMERICAN QUINTET

POLISH-HUNGARIAN HARMONY 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE POLISH INSTITUTE IN BUDAPEST

Page 37

Page 44

FRIDAY 10 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.00

FRIDAY 17 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.00

ARMEL OPERA COMPETITION 2014 CHRISTIAN HENKING: FIGARO¿

CAFe BUDAPEST PÉTER EÖTVÖS: LADY SARASHINA

ARMEL OPERA COMPETITION 2014 MARCO TUTINO: EMBERS

Page 38

Page 46

FRIDAY 10 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.00

SATURDAY 18 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.00

C. P. E. BACH 300 ENSEMBLE MIMAGE+

CAFe BUDAPEST SOUNDS OF SAPPORO AN EVENING OF CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE MUSIC

Page 38

FRIDAY 10 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.00

MÁV SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Page 46

Page 40

SUNDAY 19 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.00

SATURDAY 11 OCTOBER 2014 / 15.30

CAFe BUDAPEST PÉTER EÖTVÖS: LADY SARASHINA

ZUGLÓ PHILHARMONICS BUDAPEST

Page 46

SUNDAY 26 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.00

Page 54 SUNDAY 26 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.30

DAVID LANG AT THE LISZT ACADEMY Page 50

MONDAY 27 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.30

ISABELLE FAUST & STUTTGART RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Page 54

TUESDAY 28 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.30

ZUGLÓ PHILHARMONICS BUDAPEST Page 54

WEDNESDAY 29 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.00

CHAMBER MUSIC, SO CLOSE KODÁLY QUARTET Page 58

THURSDAY 30 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.30

Page 40

SUNDAY 19 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.30

SATURDAY 11 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.00

CONCERTO BUDAPEST & UMZE CHAMBER ENSEMBLE

Page 58

C. P. E. BACH 300 CONCERTO ARMONICO BUDAPEST “GROSSES HOFKONZERT”

Page 49

FRIDAY 31 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.00

TUESDAY 21 OCTOBER 2014 / 19.30

Page 58

FESTIVE CONCERT MARKING THE 70TH BIRTHDAY OF PIANIST GYULA KISS

SATURDAY 1 NOVEMBER 2014 / 11.00

Page 40

SUNDAY 12 OCTOBER 2014 / 16.00

C. P. E. BACH 300 CONCERTO ARMONICO BUDAPEST Page 41

Page 49

HEGEDŰS ENDRE CHOPIN RECITAL

MÁV SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

UNDERSTANDING MUSIC BUDAFOK DOHNÁNYI ORCHESTRA GLOBAL CITIZENS OF HUNGARIAN MUSIC: ISTVÁN KERTÉSZ Page 59 115

SATURDAY 1 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.30

BUDAFOK DOHNÁNYI ORCHESTRA

Page 59

SATURDAY 8 NOVEMBER 2014 / 16.00; 20.00

FRIDAY 21 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.00

1ST BUDAPEST INTERNATIONAL GUITAR COMPETITION FINAL AND GALA CONCERT

ACOUSTIC, AUTHENTIC KÁTYA TOMPOS & GÓBÉ ORCHESTRA

SUNDAY 2 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.30

Page 69

DANUBIA ORCHESTRA ÓBUDA VON DOHNÁNYI – DESTINY

SUNDAY 9 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.00

Page 59 MONDAY 3 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.45

BUDAPEST FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA BAROQUE RECITAL Page 62 TUESDAY 4 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.45

THE RAPE OF LUCRETIA

Page 69

FRIDAY 21 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.45

MIKHAIL PLETNEV & BUDAPEST FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA Page 76

TUESDAY 11 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.30

SATURDAY 22 NOVEMBER 2014 / 15.30

CARACAS YOUTH ORCHESTRA AMBASSADORS OF THE ‘EL SISTEMA’

MIKHAIL PVLETNEV & BUDAPEST FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA

Page 69

Page 76

SUNDAY 16 NOVEMBER 2014 / 11.00

SATURDAY 22 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.00

LISZT KIDZ ACADEMY THE STRINGS FOR 10-15-YEAR-OLDS

JUBILEE CONCERT OF ILONA PRUNYI 50 YEARS ON STAGE

Page 72

Page 78

Page 64

SUNDAY 16 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.00

SUNDAY 23 NOVEMBER 2014 / 15.30

WEDNESDAY 5 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.30

NEW FRANZ LISZT CHAMBER CHOIR LOVE AND DEATH

ZUGLÓ PHILHARMONICS BUDAPEST

JEAN-EFFLAM BAVOUZET & BALÁZS SZOKOLAY – TWO PIANOS RECITAL

MONDAY 17 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.30

SUNDAY 23 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.30

GÁBOR BOLDOCZKI & FRANZ LISZT CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

ZOLTÁN KOCSIS & LISZT ACADEMY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

TUESDAY 18 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.30

WEDNESDAY 26 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.00

ANDREA ROST & CONCERTO BUDAPEST

CHAMBER MUSIC, SO CLOSE KIM KASHKASHIAN & PÉTER NAGY

WEDNESDAY 19 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.30

THURSDAY 27 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.00

JAZZ IT! BRUSSELS JAZZ ORCHESTRA ‘SWEETHEART & THE DAREDEVIL’

GÁBOR FARKAS & MÁV SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

BUDAPEST FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA BAROQUE RECITAL Page 62 WEDNESDAY 5 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.00

THE RAPE OF LUCRETIA

Page 62

THURSDAY 6 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.00

SONG RECITALS AT LISZT ACADEMY EMŐKE BARÁTH & GÁBOR CSALOG ‘BOUND TOGETHER FOREVER’ Page 64 THURSDAY 6 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.30

MVM CONCERTS – THE PIANO DÉNES VÁRJON PIANO RECITAL Page 68

FRIDAY 7 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.00

THE RAPE OF LUCRETIA

PAGE 68

Page 72

Page 74

THURSDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.00

IN MEMORIAM MIHÁLY BÄCHER

Page 78

Page 80

Page 82

FRIDAY 28 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.30

ON THE SPOT – THE STRINGS DEPARTMENT

SATURDAY 8 NOVEMBER 2014 / 11.00

Page 74

LISZT KIDZ ACADEMY THE ORCHESTRA FOR 10-15-YEAR-OLDS

THURSDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.45

SATURDAY 29 NOVEMBER 2014 / 11.00 AND 15.00

MIKHAIL PLETNEV & BUDAPEST FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA

Page 82

Page 68

Page 76

116

Page 76

Page 82

STORY-TELLING MUSIC

SATURDAY 29 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.00

WEDNESDAY 10 DECEMBER 2014 / 19.00

SUNDAY 14 DECEMBER 2014 / 19.00

TALENT OBLIGE ANASTASIA RAZVALYAEVA HARP FANTASIES

CHAMBER MUSIC, SO CLOSE CLARINET EVENING WITH WENZEL FUCHS

Page 96

IN MEMORIAM DÉNES ZSIGMONDY

Page 90

FRIDAY 19 DECEMBER 2014 / 19.00

SUNDAY 30 NOVEMBER 2014 / 19.30

THURSDAY 11 DECEMBER 2014 / 19.30

CHRISTMAS CONCERT ANDREA VIGH HARP RECITAL

BEYOND MUSIC… TAMÁS VÁSÁRY MUSICAL CONVERSATIONS

ACOUSTIC, AUTHENTIC MÁRTA SEBESTYÉN

Page 83

MONDAY 1 DECEMBER 2014 / 19.30

HUNGARIAN NATIONAL PHILHARMONIC Page 86

TUESDAY 2 DECEMBER 2014 / 19.00

Page 97

Page 90

SATURDAY 20 DECEMBER 2014 / 16.00

FRIDAY 12 DECEMBER 2014 / 19.30

MR CHILDREN’S CHOIR CHRISTMAS CONCERT

CHAMBER MUSIC, SO CLOSE STEVEN ISSERLIS & DÉNES VÁRJON

Page 97

Page 90

SUNDAY 21 DECEMBER 2014 / 19.30

SATURDAY 13 DECEMBER 2014 / 19.30

PURE BAROQUE THE KING’S CONSORT

STEVEN ISSERLIS & CONCERTO BUDAPEST

Page 98

Page 92

MONDAY 22 DECEMBER 2014 / 19.00

Page 86

SUNDAY 14 DECEMBER 2014 / 19.30

Page 97

TUESDAY 2 DECEMBER 2014 / 19.30

STEVEN ISSERLIS & CONCERTO BUDAPEST

SUNDAY 28 DECEMBER 2014 / 19.30

JAZZ IT! MOLNÁR BENCZE QUARTET FEATURING KRISTÓF BACSÓ

DANUBIA ORCHESTRA ÓBUDA PROKOFIEV – LOVE AND DEATH

Page 92

Page 87

MONDAY 15 DECEMBER 2014 / 19.30

THURSDAY 4 DECEMBER 2014 / 19.00

SNÉTBERGER QUARTET FEAT. MARKUS STOCKHAUSEN

LÁSZLÓ BARANYAY & HIS STUDENTS

Page 92

Page 87

MONDAY 15 DECEMBER 2014 / 19.30

FRIDAY 5 DECEMBER 2014 / 19.30

ALENA BAEVA, YURI BASHMET & FRANZ LISZT CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

ADVENT CONCERT WITH THE ANGELICA GIRLS CHOIR Page 87

SUNDAY 7 DECEMBER 2014 / 11.00

LISZT KIDZ ACADEMY THE CLARINET FOR 10-15-YEAR-OLDS Page 88 SUNDAY 7 DECEMBER 2014 / 19.30

SONG RECITALS AT THE LISZT ACADEMY IAN BOSTRIDGE & THOMAS ADÈS Page 88

Page 92

TUESDAY 16 DECEMBER 2014 / 19.30

ON THE SPOT – KODÁLY 132

W. A. MOZART: THE MAGIC FLUTE

BENKÓ DIXIELAND BAND BRING ME SUNSHINE! Page 98 MONDAY 29 DECEMBER 2014 / 19.30

PURE BAROQUE CONCERTO ARMONICO BUDAPEST Page 102

TUESDAY 30 DECEMBER 2014 / 19.30

ACOUSTIC, AUTHENTIC GREAT CHRISTMAS FOLK MUSIC WITH ÁGI SZALÓKI Page 102

Page 95

WEDNESDAY 31 DECEMBER 2014 / 10.45

THURSDAY 18 DECEMBER 2014 / 19.00

AMADINDA PERCUSSION ENSEMBLE AND GÁBOR PRESSER NEW YEAR’S EVE CONCERT

W. A. MOZART: THE MAGIC FLUTE

Page 95

Page 102

THURSDAY 18 DECEMBER 2014 / 19.00

VILMOS SZABADI & MÁV SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Page 96

117

TICKET MAP GRAND HALL

CHOIR LEFT 10 – 19

RIGHT 19 – 10

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 39 38 37 36 35 34 33 32 31 30 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20

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

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

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

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

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

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

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

2 3 4 5 6 7 8

M1 M2 M3

12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

8 7 6 5 4 3 2

1 M3 M2 M1

RIGHT 12 – 1

LEFT 1 – 12

7 6

3 2 1

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

LEFT 9– 1

118

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

I II III IV V VI

CENTRE-LEFT CENTRE-RIGHT 1–7 1– 7

CENTRE BALCONY

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

I II III IV V VI

1 2 3 4

5 5

9 8

8 9

STALLS

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

RIGHT 1–9

12 – 1

12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

BALCONY RIGHT

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

24 – 13

12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12

12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

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

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

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

ONSTAGE SEATS: 80 SEATS

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

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

STAGE

V VI III II I

BALCONY LEFT

19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10

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

1 – 12

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

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

13 – 24

LEGEND Category 1 Category 2 Category 3 Category 4 Reserved for services

TICKET MAP SOLTI HALL CONTACT , VISITOR INFORMATION LISZT FERENC ACADEMY OF MUSIC

A1061 Budapest, Liszt Ferenc tér 8 central phone number: (1) 462-4600 ZENEAKADÉMIA Customers can also address their inquiries KONCERTKÖZPONT to kozonsegkapcsolat@zeneakademia.hu. SAJÁT SZERVEZÉSÉBEN.

LEGEND Category 1 Category 2 Reserved for services

TICKETING The ticket office of the Liszt Academy Concert Centre operates 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.

STAGE A

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

III

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

III

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

VII

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

VII

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

VIII

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

XII

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

XII

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

XIV

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

LISZT ACADEMY OPENING HOURS, GUDIED TOURS Liszt Academy opening hours, gudied tours The main building of the Liszt Academy can be visited in guided tours lasting approx. 50 minutes. Guides speaking Hungarian, English, German, French, Italian, Russian, Spanish or Japanese are provided by the Liszt Academy. Participants can enter the ground floor and first floor foyers, the Grand Hall and the Solti Hall. Tour dates and further information at zeneakademia.hu/en/guided-tours, registration for groups at turizmus@zeneakademia.hu. Tickets: Guided tour in Hungarian: HUF 1 500 Student / Concessions: HUF 750 Guided tour in a foreign language: HUF 2 900 Student / Concessions: HUF 1450

XIII XIV

M3 M2 M1

M1 M2 M3 LEFT 1–7

RIGHT 7–1

STALLS

14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In order to ensure undisturbed teaching conditions the building is closed to the general public during the day and opens 1 hour prior to the start of 1.concerts. kategória

14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2. kategória

14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

8 7 6 5 4 3

2 1

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

8 7 6 5 4 3 LEFT 1–7

RIGHT 8–1

BALCONY

JELMAGYARÁZAT

ACCESS

szolgálati hely

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

AUTHORS OF THE CONCERT MAGAZINE: PUBLISHER: Dr. Andrea Vigh, President of the Liszt Academy

EDITOR IN CHIEF: Imre Szabó Stein

MANAGING EDITOR: Gergely Fazekas

PUBLISHING MANAGER: Ágnes Varga

LAYOUT: Allison Advertising Kft. Gergő Cuba

High Voltage Kft.

Concert reviews by Gergely Fazekas Translators: James Stewart, Nicholas Jenkins English proofreading: Robert Szente

PRINTING:

PHOTOGRAPHERS:

Keskeny és Társai 2001 Kft.

Anna Baász Szűcs, Róbert László Bácsi, Marco Borggreve, Karl Blossfeldt, Felix Broede, Phile Deprez, Imre Drégely, Gábor Fejér, Andrea Felvégi, Eszter Gordon, Marc Harrison, Yuval Hen, Wouter Jansen, Leslie Kee, Judit Marjai, Balázs Mohai, László Moholy-Nagy, Pán-Nordpont Ltd., Zsolt Pataky, Mária Pecsics, Milán Rácmolnár, Zsófi Raffay, Simon Fowler, Steve Riskind, Klaus Rudolph, Keith Saunders, Kata Schiller, Detlev Schneider, Peter Serling, Lenke Szilágyi, János Vajda

PRINT PREPARATION:

Published by the Communications Directorate of the Liszt Academy in 3000 copies. The organizer retains the right to modify programmes.

FINALIZED: 8 AUGUST 2014 120

Pedro Amaral – Portuguese composer, conductor, musicologist Dr. András Batta – musicologist, government commissioner for classical music, former president of the Liszt Academy Anna Belinszky – musicologist student of the Liszt Academy Barbara Bércesi – jazz journalist Márton Devich – journalist, editor at the Hungarian News Agency Gergely Fazekas – musicologist, assistant lecturer of the Liszt Academy Kim Kashkashian – Grammy-award winning Armenian-American violist József Kling – journalist, music critic Péter Lorenz – member of staff of the Communications Directorate János Mácsai – musicologist, piano expert Máté Mesterházi – musicologist, member of staff of the library of the Liszt Academy Szabolcs Molnár – musicologist, professor of the Bartók Conservatory Ferenc Sebő – Kossuth Prize winning folklorist, singer, professor of the Liszt Academy Szabolcs Tóth – sitarist, music journalist Tamás Vajna – member of staff of the Communications Directorate Dániel Végh – member of staff of the Communications Directorate

With particular thanks to Ábel Szalontai (DLA) photographer, head of MOME’s Photography Department.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

“CONCERTS FINANCE THE MUSICAL WORLD” INTERVIEW WITH SIMON REINICK

A FINNISH HUNGARIAN – INTERVIEW WITH PEKKA KUUSISTO

CONCERTS IN SEPTEMBER

“THE CLARINET IS THE MICROPHONE OF MY SOUL”

A MAJESTIC OAK

MAKING THE FLEETING MOMENT ETERNAL

THE BASTIONS OF THE GLOBAL TALENT INDUSTRY

18 24

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION ON A GLOBAL NOTE TOWARDS NEW DIMENSIONS

VUJICSICS

ANOUSHKA

CONCERTS IN OCTOBER

A SPARKLING SKY AT THE LISZT ACADEMY

“STOP BEING CLEVER AND JUST PLAY MY MUSIC!” INTERVIEW WITH C. P. E. BACH

GROUP 180

INFINITE SUBTLETY AND CLARITY INTERVIEW WITH PÉTER EÖTVÖS

TO IMPRESS, TO MOVE

56 59

“EVERY NOTE IS MY OWN RESPONSIBILITY” CONCERTS IN NOVEMBER

“I'M THE LIVING COUNTER-EXAMPLE” INTERVIEW WITH JEAN-EFFLAM BAVOUZET

THE SONG RECITAL

UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE INTERVIEW WITH ANDRÁS DINNYÉS

BIG BAND VS THE BIG WHITE SCREEN

LETTING GO

PARITY – INTERVIEW WITH MIKLÓS SZENTHELYI AND KÁLMÁN DRÁFI

CONCERTS IN DECEMBER

“BE IDEALISTIC!” INTERVIEW WITH STEVEN ISSERLIS

100

WHAT IS BAROQUE?

104

A SHOWER OF PRIZES FOR THE RENOVATED LISZT ACADEMY

107

THE “KONZI”

108

LISZT KIDZ ACADEMY YOUTH PROGRAMMES AT THE LISZT ACADEMY

110

FRIENDS OF THE LISZT ACADEMY

114

CONCERT CHRONOLOGY

SUPPORTER OF LISZT ACADEMY:

STRATEGIC PARTNERS:

PARTNERS OF THE UNIVERSITY: