Beyond Season Tickets – Fall 2015 Performance Season at Liszt Academy

The Acoustic, Authentic folk music series launched at the reopening of the Liszt Academy continues on 27 September  with the concert of Ágnes Herczku presenting her new album Bandázom (I’m playing with the band) with her band of seven members, who have been forged into a genuine community of artists during their recent tour. On 7 October  the legendary cimbalom player Kálmán Balogh celebrates the 40^th anniversary of his performing career; on 1 December Csík Ensemble member Marianna Majorosi and her guests take to the stage in the Solti Hall; and finally, the night before New Year’s Eve Bea Palya invites the audience to a turn-of-the-year recital.

The Jazz It! season ticket series showcases such top-notch representatives of the genre as Leszek Możdżer, the brightest comet of Polish jazz in the past decade, and the Brad Mehldau Trio, featuring double bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jeff Ballard as partners of the leading pianist, whose solo concert given in the Liszt Academy’s Grand Hall in 2013 was such an overwhelming success that he gave five encores. The series also offers a performance by young Hungarian jazz quartet Silence Fiction made up of members Georgina Kanizsa, Dániel Vikukel, Márk Miskolczi and Marcell Urbán.

Other highlights of the Fall 2015 season at the Liszt Academy will include some further classical music curiosities offered by the cream of Hungarian and international musicians. On 11 September the Kelemen Quartet will play with Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang and German-French cellist Nicolas Altstaedt. On 24 September Ukrainian singer Tetiana Zhuravel, who won both the second prize and the audience prize at the 1^st Éva Marton International Singing Competition, is partnered by Natalia Korolko on piano to select from a vocal repertoire spanning 300 years. In a recital to be given on 10 October, the quartet of Romanian-born violinist Corina Belcea is joined by Austrian pianist Till Ferner, while on 12 October the Labèque sisters perform four-hand and two piano pieces related to France.

On 19 October the Liszt Academy’s Grand Hall greets the Latvian-born artist Mischa Maisky, one of today’s foremost exponents of the cello, who for this recital is accompanied by the New Hungarian Chamber Orchestra. A jubilee concert on the 100^th anniversary of the death of Károly Goldmark is given by Ádám Banda, Ditta Rohmann, Bernadett Wiedermann and Tihamér Hlavacsek on 30 October. First prize winner of the 1^st Éva Marton International Singing Competition Szilvia Vörös stages a song recital accompanied by Károly Mocsári on the piano on 7 November; the next day the audience of the Grand Hall will be presented with a concert by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutoit, whose program is compiled of compositions from 20^th-century French and Russian music.

Pianist Alex Szilasi and the Wrocław Baroque Orchestra perform works by Chopin, Görner and Rossini on 11 November, followed by the piano pieces of Hungary’s greatest 20^th-century composers Bartók, Kodály and Kurtág as interpreted by pianist Mariann Marczi on 28 November. Denis Matsuev, an artist well-known to Hungarian audiences, takes to the stage on 9 December, this time with the Chamber Orchestra Vienna-Berlin, and on 15 December violinist Barnabás Kelemen and pianist José Gallardo give a concert highlighting Argentine music.

The students and teachers of the Liszt Academy as usual are featured in the On the Spot season ticket series – and even beyond: on 30 September his former violin students pay homage to Dénes Kovács, one of the most influential rectors of the Liszt Academy, while the World Music Day offers the jubilee concert of the Kodály Institute and the International Kodály Society. On 22 October the Liszt Academy Symphony Orchestra takes to the stage under the baton of Pinchas Steinberg, and on 27 October a joint concert is organized by the Korean Liszt Society and the Liszt Academy. The ‘house’ symphony orchestra formed from students of the Academy and conducted by Zoltán Kocsis will play works by Hungarian composers on 15 November. In December the Liszt Academy Concert Centre organizes a multi-day guitar festival featuring international artists.

To the lovers of early music and the historical performance mode, the Fall 2015 season will bring old favorites as well as first-time guests at the Liszt Academy: world-renowned performers include the Balthasar-Neumann Choir & Ensemble, Rachel Podger and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Concerto Armonico Budapest. Naturally, opera is not excluded from the program of the Liszt Academy: the highly popular The Magic Flute production with artistic direction by Éva Marton, which was the first opera to be performed in the restored Solti Hall, will be played on three dates in December 2015.

An overall program listing for the Fall 2015 season can be viewed by clicking here. Single tickets for concerts within the season ticket series may be purchased from 11 June 2015.