Festival of Hungarian Gems Closing concert - DUBROVAY / EÖTVÖS / KODÁLY / LISZT // Balázs / Kiss Gy. / Szalai / Keller

A Celebration of Hungarian Treasures - HUNGARIAN RHAPSODIES AND FANTASIES

Treasures rooted in the past that add lustre to those of ​the present are what await us at this celebratory concert, with these two-time frames touching each other and even playing together at this performance conducted by András Keller. This is because László Dubrovay’s Third Hungarian Rhapsody, which will receive its world premiere on this evening, employs the tárogató, one of the emblematic instruments of Hungary’s history, as well as the cimbalom, which has been used in this country for almost half a millennium, primarily by Gypsy musicians, and because Cziffra Psodia, the 2020 work Péter Eötvös composed for the centenary of György Cziffra’s birth, here featuring János Balázs and Miklós Lukács as the soloists, evokes the memory of this pianist and his amazing and turbulent life. Also evoked in this latter work that plays with the letters of the epochal virtuoso’s name are the Eötvös family’s personal memories of Cziffra, as well as the figure of the great pianist’s father, a cimbalom-playing café musician. Likewise systematically, Zoltán Kodály too reached back into the very distant past of our common musical heritage with his masterful Peacock Variations, and in the middle of the 19th century, Franz Liszt was motivated by a very similar intention in composing his Hungarian Fantasy, even if the motifs used in the amazing piano concerto were more folk-like, rather than coming from the medium of folk music itself.