Festivals

Concerto Budapest will be holding its three-day violin festival featuring Hungarian violinists for the first time in 2025. In addition to showcasing the inexhaustible range of possibilities the instrument has to offer, the Violin Festival also provides an opportunity to encounter our nation’s finest violinists, including several combinations of teachers and students. Joining Kristóf Baráti, Barnabás Kelemen, Katalin Kokas and Júlia Pusker on the programme will be some representatives of the younger generation of Hungarian violinists, such as Teo Gertler, Amira Abouzahra, Mariam Abouzahra and Gáspár Kelemen, along with artists from other countries like Lilia Pocitari, the winner of the 2023 Bartók World Competition. As it is the objective of Concerto Budapest to celebrate this wonderful instrument in as much of its full diversely as possible over the course of three entire days, we will hear it played in trios, string quartets and other chamber music configurations, as well as in chamber orchestral works and concertos accompanied by a large orchestra.

By now a tradition, Concerto Budapest dedicates a concert series to the classic masterpieces of Hungarian music and its many values well worth discovering, its contemporary novelties and specialties of the last century, furthermore, domestic productions marking the meeting points of various worlds of genres and performers. And it is by far from the first time that András Keller and colleagues have offered us all this wealth of universal musical heritage condensed into a single festival. We are talking about the Hungarian Gems Series, which in the wake of last year’s resounding success now features – over the course of one day – the music of Bartók, Kodály, Hubay, Liszt, and László Dubrovay all for the listening pleasure of Liszt Academy audiences. 

Year after year since 2018, Concerto Budapest has dedicated a day-long series of concerts to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the eternal favourite of classical music, or rather to our shared and unquenchable passion for Mozart. And so it is on the first Sunday in March 2024. Wind quartets, clarinet concerto, horn concerto, overtures, symphonies, a variety of genres will represent Mozart's art in four consecutive concerts, with the participation of top artists such as horn player Stefan Dohr, clarinet player Wenzel Fuchs, pianist Gergely Bogányi, violinist-conductor Arvid Engegård and the Keller Quartet. "This day will stay with me for the rest of my life as a bright, clear and beautiful memory. The magic of Mozart's music still rings in my ears, as if from a distance." This is what Franz Schubert wrote two hundred years ago about a day spent listening to the music of his great and much admired predecessor, and it is a good chance that we will all remember this Mozartian Sunday in the same way.

Artistic Director: András Keller
Host of Mozart Day 2024: András Batta

Music festival in BMC by Concerto Budapest- Ligeti Ensemble

Programme director: András Keller, music director and chief conductor of Concerto Budapest

Understanding, wonderment, profundity, discoveries and rediscoveries: this is what the Day of Listening promises the public and, indeed, the performers in what is the fifth occasion the festival has been arranged, this year on Sunday 5th of November 2023. It is a tradition for music programs on the Day of Listening to be staged in several venues at the same time, during which visitors meet András Keller and artists of Concerto Budapest as well as superlative soloists and chamber musicians. The one-day music event by Concerto Budapest is designed to focus attention primarily on contemporary music and the creative knock-on influences arising between masterpieces of different ages. THE VIOLIN CHANNEL will LIVE STREAM the event on the website and on Facebook.

By now a tradition, Concerto Budapest dedicates a concert series to the classic masterpieces of Hungarian music and its many values well worth discovering, its contemporary novelties and specialties o...

„There are few composers whose figure and oeuvre have been so obscured by cliches than Schubert,” wrote the leading Schubert research Walther Dürr, who died a few years ago, but nothing can better overcome old and new clichés than frequent encounters with the works of the genius who lived just 31 years. This themed programme creates a dense, experiential occasion, which on Ferenc Name-day offers a representative selection of the oeuvre in three concerts, furthermore, by demonstrating the diversity of the Schubert oeuvre since the programme includes iconic chamber works and posthumous exalted symphonic masterpieces, not forgetting – naturally – lieder by the “Prince of Song”. At the invitation of András Keller and Concerto Budapest, a whole army of artists is attending this day including Kristóf Baráti, Maxim Rysanov, Juliane Banse and Keller Quartet, not forgetting gifted young musicians discovered by the TV talent show Virtuózok who take to the stage (more accurately, stages) of the Liszt Academy.

Artistic director: András Keller

Music festival in BMC by Concerto Budapest

Programme director: András Keller, music director and chief conductor of Concerto Budapest