Concerto Budapest – Première II

“I consider it my great fortune that when I was 14 he started to work with me. [...] We had a very close relationship. Indeed, I received a work from him: the Passacaglia concertante, which I learned with him. He attended many performances. I frequently conducted his works; he came to the rehearsals and the concert, and expressed his views of the performance very clearly.” In one of his interviews, Heinz Holliger, the best known and greatest devotee of the art of Sándor Veress, recalled the character of the Hungarian composer. In this concert, Holliger conducts the 1948 Respublika Overture. The piece was composed for the centenary of the 1848 Revolution shortly before the artist emigrated to and settled in Switzerland. Therefore, the composer was unable to receive the Kossuth Prize, which was conferred on him partly because of this very work. ▪ Debussy’s three songs with piano accompaniment, written to the verses of Mallarmé in 1913, will be performed in the second part of the concert. The Debussy work is a 2016 arrangement for orchestra and baritone by Holliger, who is also active as a composer, and precedes the Veress overture in the programme.