With artistic leadership from András Keller and Imre Szabó Stein as director, Mozart Day 2024 by Concerto Budapest – Live stream at Gramophone and Index.hu, has reached the final of the prestigious competition in the category Music & Entertainment in Film & Video. It will compete for the Lovie Award with Epidemic Sound, from the Swedish company Acumen Media. The results will be announced to the public at the start of November. A sibling to the American Webby Awards, the Lovie Awards (https://www.lovieawards.eu/) is considered the most prestigious competition in Europe for internet content (videos and adverts). Staying true to its traditions, it puts the finalists' work to an online international public vote, with the winner earning a People’s Lovie Award. You can vote for the Hungarian film here until midnight, 17 October: Official Finalist Listing.
In addition to the lead director and producer Imre Szabó Stein, the festival's founder and artistic director András Keller – who had the idea for Mozart Day – shares the praise for the closing concert of the event with the music and television director András Komlós, the creative staff of the Liszt Academy, co-producer Gergely Lakatos, chief cameraman Jancsó Nyika, and Gábor Devich, the producer of the film and the general director of the orchestra. The film of the live internet stream was selected from 1,200 works submitted from 35 countries around the world for the final of the Music & Entertainment in Film & Video main category by the London-based Lovie Awards jury, whose members are nominated by the competition organiser, the extraordinarily influential and prestigious International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS). The members of the jury are made up of leading experts from international companies, including Jaime Teevan (Microsoft), Adrienne Lahens (TikTok), Maxine Williams (Meta), Jade Coles (Apple), Ines Alpha (Prada Beauty), Nico Sarti (Condé Nast), Camilla Calvert (Reddit) and Marc Kremers (Future Corps).
The official trailer for the two-hour-plus Hungarian concert film can be viewed HERE.
It was a moment of musical and media history when, starting at 7.30 pm on Sunday 3 March 2024, Hungarians could view the closing concert on the homepage of Index.hu, with people from the United Kingdom and around the world watching on the website Gramophone.co.uk. Gramophone Magazine, which is one of the most prestigious classical music media outlets in the world, only hosts live concert broadcasts on the very rarest occasions (you can read more about the event HERE.
Every year since 2018, Concerto Budapest has held a one-day series of concerts dedicated to one of the eternal favourites of classical music, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – or rather to Mozart's devoted global fanbase.
"This year’s Mozart Day showcased the clarinet and the horn. Mozart wrote for both instruments with such feeling. Every sound conveys the extent of his love for them. I came to Mozart relatively late. In many ways, in terms of my temperament, my personality, I am closer to Beethoven and Bartók, yet for some time Mozart has come to occupy a special place in my soul. His artistic work is more than music: it is a divine presence. Mozart truly restored to us our paradise lost," commented András Keller, Mozart Day's founder and artistic director.
Imre Szabó Stein, the stream's leading director and organiser, said, "Two major news outlets, one Hungarian and one British, were willing to give their homepage over to classical music for a few hours. This year, in an unprecedented move, I was able to convince the world's leading classical music portal, Gramophone, to join us. Reaching a new audience and getting them involved through live broadcasts and concert films represents a fantastic opportunity, especially at a time when changes in cultural habits mean people are moving more to watching videos instead of reading and listening to music."
When the internet stream of Concerto Budapest's Beethoven Day was shown on the homepage of one of Hungary's leading news portal, Index.hu, in November 2020, a total of 240,000 viewers watched the musical programme, which employed a traditional television and new cinematic approach. Since that time, under the direction of Imre Szabó Stein and András Keller's leadership, and with a format designed in collaboration with the news portal, further live streams have included three Mozart Days and the concerts Viva La Viola! and Hallgassunk Brahmsot! (Let's Listen to Brahms!). The orchestra has also enjoyed international recognitions for its films made for Mezzo TV, also directed by Imre Szabó Stein: Weinberg (2020), which won an award at the Venice Television Festival, and Kárpát Rapszódia (Carpathian Rhapsody, 2022), which won the silver award at the New York TV & Film Awards. The cinematic interpretations of classical music have been watched in part or in full by approximately 1.5 million viewers.
As indicated above, the Concerto Budapest film will compete with a Swedish work in its category at the Lovie Awards. You have until 17 October 23.59 pm to vote and help ensure a victory for the Hungarian online and professional community: Official Finalist Listing
