Dear Concertgoers!
There are two red-letter birthdays coming up in the 2023-24 season and it is our particular pleasure to be able to share the celebrations with you. Our symphony orchestra reaches its 80th year and our president-conductor Tamás Vásáry celebrates his 90th birthday. As far as the orchestra jubilee goes, we are extremely proud that in 1943, Ernő Dohnányi founded an ensemble that went on to achieve a leading position in Hungarian music; the past 80 years have been packed with unforgettable concerts and immortal recordings. We aim to celebrate in a manner befitting the occasion with a grand concert at Müpa Budapest, at which president-conductor Tamás Vásáry, as well as János Kovács, our permanent conductor, and Riccardo Frizza, our principal conductor, make appearances. This musical party also features our choir.
We celebrate Tamás Vásáry’s 90th birthday at the Liszt Academy with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, at the personal request of the conductor. Tamás Vásáry makes another appearance at a season ticket series during which gems of classical music are performed, ranging from Dvořák’s New World Symphony to Mendelssohn’s Reformation Symphony. Soloist for Dvořák’s B minor cello concerto is the glittering young talent Bence Temesvári, and Mendelssohn’s E minor violin concerto will be performed by our orchestra concertmaster, Vilmos Oláh.
Our collaboration with Riccardo Frizza is proving increasingly fruitful. For example, he conducts the concert at which the winner of the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, the South Korean Yunchan Lim, will be the soloist.
We launch next season with a surprise: to mark Petőfi memorial year, we will have the long neglected Petőfi Symphony by Jenő Hubay performed under the baton of Gábor Káli. This fine work had its world premiere in 1923, to considerable acclaim. The score was rediscovered in the National Széchényi Library and the bicentenary is the perfect moment to let audiences hear this important work again. Gábor Káli is conductor of the 2024 New Year Overture at the Liszt Academy. Talking of the Liszt Academy, we very much look forward to the Bartók World Competition, in the final of which the best young violinists perform alongside our orchestra under the direction of János Kovács.
Our youth concerts in the House of Music, Hungary were very popular this year, so we are organizing several more concerts in the coming season, involving our choir as well. It will be a pleasure to work together with Ken-Ichiro Kobayashi, who won the very first conductor competition of the Hungarian Radio and Television in Hungary exactly 50 years ago. One of the specialities of the season is world star violinist Renaud Capuçon who acts not only as soloist for Schumann’s D minor violin concerto but he also conducts our orchestra. Kristóf Baráti is another of our soloists; he performs Khachaturian’s popular violin concerto under the baton of János Kovács.
As is now customary, the choir announce their Sapszon Season Ticket directed by Zoltán Pad, plus they are taking part in the autumn Liszt Celebration at MÜPA Budapest, in which they perform Missa Choralis. The ensemble are looking forward to an intensive season with works by, among others, Verdi, Rachmaninov, Lajtha, Rossini, Mozart, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Bartók, Stravinsky, György Orbán and Gergely Vajda. At the end of January, we present Weber’s opera The Marksman (Der Freischütz) in Müpa Budapest under the direction of György Vashegyi.
In March, the Children’s Choir directed by Soma Dinyés sang in the Gewandhause, Leipzig, and in December the Leipzig Mitteldeutsche Rundfunk Children’s Choir make a return visit to Budapest, where the two choirs stage a joint concert in Matthias Church. And yet another event associated with the Children’s Choir: a gala concert featuring debuts of prize-winning works from Bartók Radio’s Petőfi 200 children’s choir tender conducted by Judit Walter. Just as in past years, so this season we are readying ourselves for Budapest Wagner Days and in the autumn we continue our series Variations for Chamber Music in Studio 6.
So in conclusion, we warmly recommend our season ticket concerts and very much look forward to welcoming you to our most brilliant performances!
Márton Devich
CEO, Hungarian Radio Art Groups
April 19, 2023