The conductor on the first evening of the concert series of the Liszt Academy Symphony Orchestra sponsored by Erste Bank will be Zoltán Kocsis. This is not the first time that Kocsis conducted the students of Liszt Academy, and we’re hopeful it won’t be the last. After all, the intellectual return and the musical intensity of the rehearsals and concert under the baton of the director of the Hungarian National Philharmonic are tantamount to several semesters of study for the students. The concert programme contains three 19th century works, played out in overture-concerto-symphony order. Tchaikovsky’s rarely performed The Tempest after Shakespeare’s play is couple with Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 with Grieg’s rightly popular Piano Concerto in A minor in between. The soloist is the young and multiple prize winning (including a Junior Prima Prize) Ivett Gyöngyösi, a student of Kálmán Dráfi and Attila Némethy.