Europe’s most supreme chamber music ensembles will arrive to the Music Academy in 2019 alongside soloists like Lisa Batiashvili or István Várdai. The two Hungarian violin virtuosos Barnabás Kelemen and Kristóf Baráti are playing chamber music while Ádám Fisher is to appear on stage as a conductor. The Liszt Ferenc Chamber Choir will  perform as resident ensemble and the Liszt Academy Symphony Orchestra will be conducted by Ken-Ichiro Kobayashi and others. Contemporary music enthusiasts can listen to the works  of György Kurtág and György Ligeti as well as a composers’ group of young Hungarians. Of course the popular series Liszt Kidz Academy is to be continued in the spring.

László Norbert Nemes, director of the New Liszt Ferenc Chamber Choir, knows the sensation that he shares with so many others in Hungary: when someone adds their own voice to the harmony, this choir member becomes part a sublime, majestic unity.

The fifth Budapest International Guitar Festival is to be held this year, keeping the guitar in chamber music in focus this time. We asked the founder of the festival: Liszt Prize winning guitarrist József Eötvös, head of Strings Department at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music regarding the programme and the performing artists.

As a result of nine years of efforts and cooperation, restored Voit organ of symbolic importance in Hungarian music life, sounded again in the Grand Hall of the Academy of Music on 22 October. Relocation and restoration of the first organ installed in a concert hall in Hungary, after a century of vicissitudes, was an event of significance for the conservation of European cultural heritage as well.

One hundred years ago on 25th March, the very day Claude Debussy passed away, Béla Bartók was celebrating his 37th birthday. A couple of weeks later the periodical ‘Esztendő’, owned by Lajos Hatvany, asked Bartók to assess the works of the French composer. He summed up his analysis thus: “The significance of Debussy is unquestionably revealed by the impact that he exercised – in the best possible meaning of the word – on the young generation of musicians, both abroad and in our own country. Whether this impact will prevail and evolve into further progress is impossible to predict. However, one thing is for sure, his compositions will not lose colour because he pooled great value in them.”

When you open the gate with its the huge copper doorknob it feels as if you have entered another universe. The roar of the street is left outside; instead notes of the violin and piano, scales on the flute fill the space with a curious riot of sound, as if one were listening to some avant-garde musical composition. There is no need to ask the receptionist to check that you have arrived at the right destination: this is certainly the Bartók Conservatory, or more precisely, the Bartók Béla Secondary School of Music, Instrument Making and Repair.