New Season Tickets and Beethoven Memorial Year in 2020
David Fray, Gautier Capuçon, Yuja Wang, the Wiener Sängerknaben, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Miklós Perényi and Peter Frankl are just some of the performers to take the stage at the spring 2020 season ticket concerts of the Liszt Academy. Next year marks Beethoven's 250th birth anniversary and a special concert series will be dedicated to the composer’s memory. The Beethoven Exhibition in the Brunszvik Castle in Martonvásár will be renewed and special events will be organized with the assistance of experts from the Liszt Academy.
Once again, the concert halls of the Liszt Academy will be home to performances by a range of domestic and foreign superstars in 2020, Dr. Andrea Vigh, President of the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music said in her welcome remarks at a press conference on Thursday organized to present the Academy’s season tickets and programmes. Aiming to start a tradition, the Academy will launch a New Year's concert series, the first of which will take place on January 1, 2020 with the participation of the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Tamás Vásáry, Andrea Vigh announced.
Speaking about the spring 2020 concert series, András Csonka, Program Director at the Liszt Academy, highlighted the season ticket of the Liszt Academy Symphony Orchestra (Masters of the Orchestra 2020), at the concerts of which the students of the university will perform under the guidance of world-famous conductors such as Gábor Takács-Nagy, Dennis Russel Davies, Gilbert Varga and Zsolt Hamar.
An entire concert series will be organized to celebrate János Rolla, who turns 75 next year (János Rolla & Liszt Academy Chamber Orchestra): he will be performing three special shows together with the chamber orchestra comprising the best string students. World-famous French pianist, David Fray, will be the guest of the very first of these recitals.
Each of the quartets performing in the concert series featuring the best string quartets (Four by Four +1 Spring 2020) will present a special guest, leading to such unique combinations as the joint performance of the legendary Borodin Quartet and László Fenyő, whose international career is on the rise; the joint concert of the Hagen Quartet and Kirill Gerstein also promises to be awe-aspiring.
Chamber music aficionados will also be treated to outstanding musical experiences in the spring 2020 edition of the Chamber Music – Tuned for Grand Hall, at the concerts of Gautier Capuçon and Yuja Wang or Kristóf Baráti, István Várdai and Máté Szűcs as well as the performances of the older generation represented by Miklós Perényi, Péter Frankl and András Keller. Lilla Horti, the excellent young soprano who was awarded at the Éva Marton International Singing Competition, will be a guest performer at the András Keller recital.
Photo: Liszt Academy/Dénes Erdős
The popular solo piano series (Black and White Colours 2020) will once again offer unique shows to the lovers of the instrument.
The Spring 2020 season ticket of the Masters of Vocal Music will introduce local audiences to three different ensembles, hailed as the best in their respective genres: the Belgian Vox Luminis chamber choir, the world-famous Wiener Sängerknaben of Austria, and the Monteverdi Choir, led by Sir John Eliot Gardiner and accompanied by the English Baroque Soloists. This time around, the Here and Now Spring 2020 season ticket is also designed for lovers of choir music: the Netherlands Kammerkor, one of the most experimental choirs yet one that never fails to captivate Hungarian audiences with its crystal clear sonority arrives with the Hungarian premiere of a contemporary choral composition.
In addition to the renowned Balázs Szabó, professor at the Academy, internationally acclaimed artist Zsuzsa Elekes will also perform at the concerts included in the Organ in the Centre Spring 2020 season ticket, while Germany’s Wolfgang Seifen will guide audiences into a world of improvisation.
Musical nature, that is the depiction of birds, insects, wildlife and fish in music will play centerstage in the Liszt Kidz Academy series in the spring of 2020 (Liszt Kidz Academy - Musical Nature).
The Liszt Academy will celebrate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birthday with a concert series spanning the entire year (Beethoven Plus). The opening act will be a spectacular recital by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under the guidance of Philippe Jordan, one of the most exciting Swiss conductors, with two symphonies composed by the great master featuring on the evening’s programme, stressed András Csonka.
Hungary’s Beethoven Memorial Year, from April to December 2020, is organized by the Agricultural Research Centre with the professional assistance of the Liszt Academy, among others. Professor Dr. Ervin Balázs, director general of the former institution, unveiled a list of plans: the Brunszvik Castle will be home to guided tours accompanied by music, music pedagogy sessions and art history lectures. Lóránt Péteri, head of the Department of Musicology at the Franz Liszt Music Academy noted that the exhibition at the Beethoven Memorial Museum in Martonvásár will be expanded and renewed within the framework of the cooperation.
The final programme of the New Year's concert of the Liszt Academy is soon to be decided, but György Igric, artistic director of the Artistic Ensembles at the Hungarian Radio, promised exciting and high-quality entertainment.
A mini-series featuring Rachmaninov's concertos will be organized by the National Philharmonic Orchestra and the Liszt Academy on two consecutive May evenings. These concertos are an essential feature of the piano repertoire, so the events are also bound to generate widespread interest. The orchestra led by Zsolt Hamar and starring János Balázs, Kossuth Prize-winning pianist and professor at the Liszt Academy, will perform these masterpieces, complete with virtuosic Paganini variations. Attila Falvay, leading violonist of the National Philharmonic added that next year the orchestra will be performing at the summer concerts organized in the garden of Brunszvik Castle in Martonvásár.