Hungarian Gems Series/All-day concert series of the Concerto Budapest

15.00: Stars of the Future

Bartók: Rhapsody No. 1, BB 94b

László Dubrovay: Hungarian Rhapsody for Clarinet and Orchestra

Hubay: Carmen, Fantaisie brillante, Op. 3/3

Liszt: Hungarian Fantasy

Gáspár Kelemen, Teo Gertler (violin), Dániel Ali Lugosi (clarinet), Mihály Boros (piano)

Concerto Budapest

Conductor: András Keller

The programme of the classical music talent show, Virtuosos, focusing on the young stars of the future, encompasses more than one and a half centuries. The earliest composition, by Liszt, was written in the first half of the 1850s. Its most recent piece, Hungarian Rhapsody for Clarinet and Orchestra by László Dubrovay was completed in 2006, commissioned back then for the Mahler Jubilee. Dániel Ali Lugosi plays the solo of the piece this time. There will be another rhapsody: Béla Bartók’s Rhapsody No. 1 completed in 1928 and dedicated to József Szigeti. This time, it will be performed by Gáspár Kelemen. Mihály Boros will get the lion’s share in the performance of the virtuoso Hungarian Fantasy so dear to our hearts. The programme will present another brilliant 19th-century fantasy: the pivotal music educator and violinist Jenő Hubay garnered his first great success as a composer with his Carmen Fantasie, written in 1876 based on Bizet’s opera. Teo Gertler will prove his exceptional talent by performing it.

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17.00: Muzsikás Ensemble

Hanga Kacsó – Dani Szabó duo, Mária Petrás (voice), Kálmán Balogh (cimbalom)

Muzsikás Ensemble

If we celebrate the gems of Hungarian music, we can hardly find anything more authentic than traditional folk music, Bartók’s clearest spring and the domestically most popular and internationally best-known representatives of this genre: the Muzsikás Ensemble, founded in 1973. The partnership between the formation playing a pioneering role in the Hungarian traditional folk music revival and the Concerto Budapest and András Keller goes back several decades.

At the Hungarian Gems concert, the ensemble will evoke the folk music tradition of various regions ranging from Slovenia to Transdanubia, the Great Hungarian Plain, Transylvania, from Gyimes to Moldova. Two worldwide celebrated and regular guest artists will take to the stage alongside the ensemble. The Hungarian Heritage and Prima Primissima Award-winning folk singer Mária Petrás acquired the then still alive csango musical tradition in her childhood. She conveys this traditional folk culture with great authenticity and precision. The Prima Primissima Award-winning cimbalom player, Kálmán Balogh has been conducting profound research on the traditional cimbalom performance of villages since the 1970s. He took an active part in the Hungarian cimbalom-revival movement and the urban popularisation and teaching of the rural traditions. Their joint Hungarian Gems concert is a genuine curiosity recalling the most natural Hungarian music tradition.

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19.30: Liszt and Bartók

Liszt: Piano Sonata in B minor

INTERMISSION

Bartók: Bluebeard’s Castle, BB 62

Dénes Várjon (piano), Szilvia Vörös (soprano), Gábor Bretz (bass-baritone)

Concerto Budapest

Conductor: András Keller

Two pivotal compositions by two emblematic giants of Hungarian music, Ferenc Liszt and Béla Bartók, feature on the programme of the closing concert of Hungarian Gems Series. In his Piano Sonata in B minor, a single grandiose piece composed for a solo instrument, the piano – played this time by Dénes Várjon, a recurring guest of Concerto Budapest –, the celebrated piano virtuoso of the 19th century, Ferenc Liszt on the peak of his career, attempted to sum up the great precursors of the genre and his own performance experience. The unusual form with four uninterrupted movements makes use of several already existing formal principles simultaneously, and it can be understood as a series of variations, just like a single movement in sonata form. Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle in the second part of the concert also carries us through Judit and Bluebeard’s story without interruption. The composer completed his only opera in 1911 based on Béla Balázs’s libretto, but it premiered only in 1918 in the Opera in Budapest. Two world-touring Hungarian singers, Gábor Bretz and Szilvia Vörös, will feature in the concert performance of the opera under András Keller’s baton. Still, the eternal drama between man and woman, the mystery of the seven keys and seven doors, is clearly perceivable.

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