Two outstanding and popular figures of contemporary Hungarian composition mark milestone birthdays this year: Boldizsár Csíky his 80th and György Orbán his 70th. This concert celebrates these two masters, both of whom were born in Tirgu Mures, trained in Cluj-Napoca and are active to this day, with a selection of key pieces from their varied compositional oeuvres: from György Orbán’s first Serenata (1984) to a performance of the ‘symphonic memorial’ Gulag by Boldizsár Csíky, which premiered in Cluj-Napoca in 2008. As conductor of the concert, Kossuth Prize holder Zoltán Rácz guarantees the artistic integrity and audience success of the evening; he has done perhaps the most in Hungary to clear up the unfounded prejudices of students, performers and concert organizers regarding contemporary music. Soloist of György Orbán’s complex Violin Concerto is the highly talented, 25-year-old violinist Bálint Kruppa, winner of the Junior Prima Prize. It is given to the superb Saint Ephraim Male Choir (founded by Tamás Bubnó in 2002) to perform the famous De profundis (Psalm 130: Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord) which appears in the closing part of Gulag, a searing musical tribute to tragic human suffering.