Arvid Engegård and the Concerto Budapest

The Norwegian violinist and conductor Arvid Engegård was once a student of Sándor Végh. He believes that his most important decision was to participate in the courses of this great Hungarian musician in Salzburg. After numerous concerts together with Concerto Budapest, Engegård will on this occasion conduct a programme where German Romanticism is intertwined with Stravinsky’s music. Moreover, the pieces will evoke other eras and worlds as well. Right at the beginning, Brahms’s Variations on a Theme by Haydn from 1873 will be played. Nonetheless, apart from that of Haydn, a choral theme is also hidden in all of the eight variations and the finale, which, of course, dates even further back in time. In the 19th century, the horn was far less popular with composers for concerto purposes than the violin or the piano. However, Robert Schumann was keen on using it as a solo instrument. What could argue for this statement more than the fact that, in 1849, he composed a piece not simply for one, but for four solo horns? “Petrushka is an old piece of mine. I am not saying that it is poor work. But it is over,” said Igor Stravinsky, who loved to shock journalists, in Budapest in 1926. As a matter of fact, he returned to this piece even decades later, and the audience “has never got over it” since.