MÁV Symphony Orchestra

The season-opening concert of the MÁV Symphony Orchestra is made all the more memorable with the appearance of two young musicians who although still in their thirties have clocked up many successes. Conductor Gábor Káli started his studies in Budapest and concluded them in Berlin. In 2018, he won the Hong Kong International Conductor Competition and the Nestle & Salzburg Festival Youth Conductor Competition. He is an acknowledged conductor on an international scale who earned remarkable success at the Salzburg Festival, in France, in the most prestigious opera houses and concert halls of Germany, in Poland, Singapore, Finland, Ireland, and of course in Hungary, too. Pianist Marcell Szabó graduated from the Liszt Academy in 2012 and is a prize winner at several international competitions. The concert offers a kind of cross-section of Russian music: Tchaikovsky’s fifth symphony (1888) is a pure evocation of the golden age of Romanticism. Alexander Scriabin was a significant artist of early 20th-century music. His single piano concerto debuted in 1898. Shostakovich struggled amidst the terrible conditions of the Stalinist Soviet Union so that he could create. The Festive Overture of 1954 is an imprint of this era.