The flavours and colours of Stravinsky are what characterise the first half of this concert, as the three Slovak folk songs from the set known as Village Scenes – Wedding, Lullaby and Lads’ Dance – and the 2nd Piano Concerto all bear the undeniable influence of Bartok’s brilliant Russian contemporary. Although Bartók himself considered most of the themes of his Second Piano Concerto, here entrusted to the virtuoso playing of Concerto Budapest Artist of the Season János Balázs, to be “more popular and lighter” in character, this by no means implies that the composition, and especially the second – adagio – movement, might fail to amaze us with what Tibor Tallián describes as “the defining moment of his oeuvre”. The second part of the evening features yet another emblematic piece, this one conducted by András Keller and performed by two wonderful opera singers: Szilvia Vörös and Miklós Sebestyén. Perhaps Bartók’s most personal work, Bluebeard’s Castle is a confession, for through Béla Balázs’s symbolic stage ballad the composer was able to recognise the essential theme and existential question that absorbed him both then in the early 1910s and later on.